Systems and method for determining use of non-human users in a distributed computer network environment

ABSTRACT

Embodiments of systems and methods as disclosed herein may determine that an initiator of a communication on a distributed computer network is an automated script or the like. More particularly, in one embodiment, a web page including a hidden field may be generated in response to a request for the web page. This hidden field is a field included in the web page that is not visible to a human user when the web page is rendered by a browser and presented to the user. By comparing a received value for such a hidden field with an associated value for the hidden field as provided in the web page, the use of an automated script may be detected.

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATION(S)

This application is a continuation of, and claims a benefit of priorityunder 35 U.S.C. 120 of the filing date of U.S. patent application Ser.No. 15/782,276 filed Oct. 12, 2017, entitled “SYSTEM AND METHOD FORDETERMINING USE OF NON-HUMAN USERS IN A DISTRIBUTED COMPUTER NETWORKENVIRONMENT,” which is a continuation of, and claims a benefit ofpriority under 35 U.S.C. 120 of the filing date of U.S. patentapplication Ser. No. 15/426,792 filed Feb. 7, 2017, entitled “SYSTEM ANDMETHOD FOR DETERMINING USE OF NON-HUMAN USERS IN A DISTRIBUTED COMPUTERNETWORK ENVIRONMENT,” issued as U.S. Pat. No. 9,819,667, which is acontinuation of, and claims a benefit of priority under 35 U.S.C. 120 ofthe filing date of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 14/988,559, filedJan. 5, 2016, entitled “SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR DETERMINING USE OFNON-HUMAN USERS IN A DISTRIBUTED COMPUTER NETWORK ENVIRONMENT,” issuedas U.S. Pat. No. 9,600,651, which claims a benefit of priority under 35U.S.C. 119 of the filing date of U.S. Provisional Patent Application No.62/099,989, filed Jan. 5, 2015, entitled “SYSTEM AND METHOD FORDETECTING SOURCES OF MALICIOUS PAYMENT CARD ACTIVITY USING AGGREGATEVIEWS OF GATEWAY RESPONSES,” U.S. Provisional Patent Application No.62/099,995, filed Jan. 5, 2015, entitled “SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR ENCODINGFINANCIAL TRANSACTION COMMUNICATIONS,” U.S. Provisional PatentApplication No. 62/099,997, filed Jan. 5, 2015, entitled “SYSTEM ANDMETHOD FOR REVERSE CAPTCHA,” and U.S. Provisional Patent Application No.62/099,998, filed Jan. 5, 2015, entitled “SYSTEM AND METHOD FORDETECTING AND COMMUNICATING WITH SOURCES OF MALICIOUS PAYMENT CARDACTIVITY,” which are all fully incorporated by reference herein for allpurposes.

TECHNICAL FIELD

This disclosure relates generally to evaluating, and responding to,communications that arise in the context of a distributed computer basednetwork. Specifically, embodiments disclosed herein relate to determinethat initiators of such communications may be potentially associatedwith an automated script or the like.

BACKGROUND

Increasingly, commerce and other exchanges that involve paymenttransactions such as those occurring in conjunction with commerce orcharity or nonprofit organizations have moved into the online world. Forexample, online fundraising is now a significant portion of thefundraising and capital campaigns of many nonprofit organizations. Theimplementation of these payment transactions in the online world hasgiven rise to specific problems that occur as a consequence of the factthat such payment transactions now take place in the context of, andutilizing communication that travel over, these highly distributedcomputer networks.

Typically, a distributed computer environment in which monetarytransfers is made include computers belonging to an organization, suchas a for-profit or not-for-profit business or association (collectivelyreferred to herein as a merchant) coupled to one or more separatepayment gateway computers over a network, most often the Internet. Thesepayment gateways are entities that are application service providersthat authorize credit card transactions and conduct or facilitatesettlement between participating institutions (e.g., banks, creditunions, etc.). User computing devices such as a personal computer,laptop computer, mobile phone or other computing device, are alsocoupled to the network.

In many cases, the merchant computers may provide a site comprised ofvarious web pages or other content (collectively, “web page”) which theuser can access over the network utilizing a browser or application(e.g., “app”) executing on his device. At least one of those web pagesincludes a portion of a page (which may be an entire page, pop-up,frame, div, iframe, etc.) through which the user may initiate a paymenttransaction when the page is rendered at the user's device by thebrowser. These payments can be made in exchange for goods or services,can simply be donations, or can be made for other reasons.

A payment gateway or separate payment system may host a secure paymentinterface (e.g., web page, application programming interface (API),etc.) through which the initiated payment may actually be completed.Thus, when the user accesses the web page from the merchant utilizinghis browser, the user interacts with the payment portion of the page forexample, by activating a payment control (e.g., a payment button). Theuser may also optionally enter personal or payment-related informationwithin this portion of the page. When all required personal and/orpayment-related information is entered, the user may provide a furtherinput, such as selection of a “submit” button, to signify readiness toactually complete the payment transaction.

In response to receipt of the input signifying user readiness tocomplete the payment the browser can then be redirected to a securepayment web page hosted on the payment gateway server. In performing theredirection, the user-entered personal or payment-related informationmay also be transmitted to the payment web page hosted by the paymentgateway.

In many cases, following the redirection, the user completes the paymentby interacting with the payment gateway's web page. For example, theuser may enter credit card information or bank account and routinginformation through the payment interface in order to complete thepayment. The payment gateway server typically confirms completion of thefinancial payment by the user by serving to the user's browser aconfirmation page.

When making an online payment such as that described above, users havetwo primary concerns, namely, security and authenticity. Security is aconcern because users do not want their private personal or financialinformation intercepted and misused. Authenticity is also a concernbecause users want payments to be received by the intended merchantrather than an unknown third party. The conventional paymentinfrastructure described above attempts to address these concernsthrough authentication with a “trusted” third party that is presumed tobe viewed as reliable by users. In many cases, the “trusted” third partyprovides a badge or seal. Users can allay concerns regarding theauthenticity of the party hosting sub-window by clicking on the badge orseal to establish communication with the “trusted” third party overnetwork to enable confirmation of the authenticity of the party.

SUMMARY

As a result of at least the problems discussed above, certain methodsand systems have been developed that utilize a service provider withinthe distributed computer network to provide a form (such as a paymentform or the like) that can be seamlessly integrated into a merchant'sweb page (e.g., which appears as a portion of, or in conjunction withthe merchant's web page, or has the same look and feel as the merchant'sweb page). A user can utilize the form to submit required paymentinformation. The service provider can then submit the paymentinformation to the payment gateway to perform the monetary transfer,receive a result from the payment gateway (e.g., approved, denied orsome other condition) and provide a result to the user through themerchant's web page. In this manner, both the user's fears aboutsecurity and authenticity and any concerns about increasing the frictioninvolved in a monetary transfer are allayed, as such a form isintegrated into the merchant's site in a seamless manner, giving theuser both the appearance and the convenience of providing all paymentinformation through the merchant's site.

Such functionality may, however, not specifically address all theconcerns of merchants with respect to these payment transactions. In theindustry, concerns of the merchant are focused additionally on fraud.Frequently, web pages that provide the ability to initiate paymenttransactions by entering payment information are targeted by scammersattempting to ascertain the validity of payment information such ascredit card numbers, bank account or routing numbers, etc. These onlinepayment mechanisms are attractive to fraudulent user because unlike inperson transactions, automated teller machines (ATMs) and even gaspumps, multiple cards can be submitted and evaluated anonymously. Thereare no security cameras, clerks present, or recording of thetransaction. Additionally, with the increasing presence of cloud serviceproviders, servers can be cheaply “rented” and used for evaluating alarge number of credit cards and may even be used as a proxy that hidesthe real identity of the fraudulent user.

In particular, online fundraising campaigns are frequently targeted byscammers seeking to determine if particular (often stolen) credit cardnumbers and supporting information (name, expiration date, address, zipcode, etc.) are valid. This situation arises in the case of non-profitorganizations for a variety of reasons. Unlike for-profit retailers,non-profits are attempting to gain as many funds as possible to delivertheir mission. Their payment form are usually open-ended on amounts theywill accept and there is no need to bother creating a dummy shoppingcart (as with retailer sites). Furthermore, there is usually no“shipping address” that needs to be managed. Accordingly, it is easierto submit a large number of credit cards through such forms and createautomated scripts that may do the same.

These scammers usually obtain credit card numbers and possibly otherassociated information. The scammers then attempt to ascertain or verifya complete set of payment of information corresponding to the creditcard number. Typically, this is done using automated scripts. Theseautomated scripts may initiate a request for a payment transaction of anominal sum (e.g., less than ten dollars) to the service provider (e.g.,through the form or an associated API offered by the service provider tosubmit payment information) where the request includes a combination ofpayment information (e.g., credit card number, CCV code, address zipcode, name, etc.). The automated script then records whether theinitiated payment transaction for that set of payment information wassuccessful. A scammer may then sell the payment information for whichtransaction is successful to another party who may then fraudulentlyutilize the payment information in another setting for potentially amuch greater amount of money.

As the number of permutations for payment information is exceedinglyhigh, scammers may utilize these types of automated scripts to runthrough hundreds, if not thousands, of combinations of paymentinformation before a single transaction goes through and the card isdeemed valid and thus available for further fraudulent use. Thismethodology means that for every payment transaction that goes through,thousands of other payment transactions may be denied. In other words,the payment gateway to which the service provider submits that paymentinformation may return a notification (e.g., a code or the like) thatthe payment transaction request has been denied.

While such a denial serves to protect the legitimate holder of thecredit card and the banks that would have been involved in any actualtransfer of funds, these denials significantly impact the merchantsthemselves. Despite the fact that the merchant receives no money inaccordance with a denied payment transaction, it is still charged a feeby the payment gateway for processing the transaction. Accordingly, inthe case where automated scripts are utilized to iterate throughthousands of combinations of payment information the accumulated feesfor the denial of these thousands of attempted payment transactions maybe significant, running into the tens, if not hundreds, of thousands ofdollars.

For any organization, especially a non-profit organization, the amountof these denial fees can be debilitating. In particular, given thebudgets of most non-profit organizations the aggregate amount of thesedenial fees may reduce the effectiveness of the organization inaccomplishing their eleemosynary mission.

While mechanisms are in use at the web pages of merchant organizationsto prevent such automated script attacks, these often provideimpediments or “friction” which may deter legitimate potential donors.For example, a system called “Completely Automated Public Turing test totell Computers and Humans Apart” (CAPTCHA) requires a user to identifyan image or text and enter corresponding information into an entrywindow. If the image or text matches the typed information, then theuser is deemed a human user (i.e., not a script) and may proceed. Oftenhowever, such images or text are indecipherable and require more thanone entry. In this case, a legitimate potential donor is likely tosimply give up and the nonprofit has lost the potential donation.

Even when CAPTCHA text and images are decipherable, however, it has beenfound that they present an impediment in part because they an additionalstep not related to desired transaction, thus causing “friction.”According to some studies, the likelihood of a first time donor making adonation falls fifty percent per additional screen he has to navigate.

Moreover, scammers are now utilizing automated scripts that aresophisticated enough to pull text data out of CAPTCHA images to enterinto the CAPTCHA field. To combat this, the CAPTCHA images have becomemore complex, creating a vicious cycle of ever increasing imagecomplexity (and thus ever increasing user difficulty). Additionally, theuser of CAPTCHA images may present an impediment to a blind user, anauditory reading of the CAPTCHA data may present an impediment to use ofthe web site by a deaf user, etc.

What is desired then, is a way to pro-actively determine that a user maybe potentially associated with fraudulent activity such as a user who is(or utilizes) an automated script or the like. In this manner, anycharges or other undesirable effects resulting from submission of afraudulent payment transaction may be substantially ameliorated.

To those ends, among others systems and methods as presented herein mayconfigure a web page (or a form appearing therein) that determines thatusers are an automated script. More particularly, in one embodiment, aweb page including one or more “invisible” or hidden questions (orfields) may be generated in response to a request for the web page.These invisible or hidden fields are fields included in the code of theweb page that are not visible to a human user when the web page isrendered by a browser and presented to the user. While not visible inthe rendered web page being presented to the user (and thus notrequiring any attention or input by the user), such invisible fields maynevertheless be identified by an automated script processing the code ofthe web page (e.g., identified by the automated script as a field thatneeds to contain a value or a value of a particular type).

If a value (or incorrect, different, etc. value) for such an invisiblefield is received through a web page including such an invisible fieldthe user interacting with the web page may be identified as potentiallyfraudulent (e.g., it may be an automated script). Embodiment of thesetechniques are thus referred to as “reverse CAPTCHA” as, rather thanrequiring a user to verify themselves as human as in CAPTCHA,embodiments allow the user to implicate itself as an automated script.

In particular, in one embodiment a web server computer may receive arequest for a web page, determine a reverse CAPTCHA field and anassociated value and provide the web page with the reverse CAPTCHA fieldin response to the request. The reverse CAPTCHA field is configured suchthat it is not visible in a visual presentation of the web page and thefield has an associated value. A response to the web page including areceived value associated with the reverse CAPTCHA field may be receivedat the web server. The web server can determine an expected value of thereverse CAPTCHA field and compare the expected value with the receivedvalue to determine if the response has been provided by an automatedscript.

In some embodiments, the web page may be modified to include the reverseCAPTCHA field and the reverse CAPTCHA field is selected randomly basedon a set of reverse CAPTCHA rules.

In an embodiment, the associated value and the expected value aredetermined algorithmically. The value may be an empty value and thereverse CAPTCHA field is configured to be hidden, displayed beneath anelement of the web page, or displayed offscreen.

In one particular embodiment a server computer coupled to a plurality ofuser devices and a plurality of payment gateways through a computernetwork includes a form generation engine, a transaction processingengine and a reverse CAPTCHA analysis engine. The form generation enginereceives a form request from a user device over the computer network inassociation with a web page of a merchant organization including awidget and provides a form definition to the user device over thecomputer network in response to the form request. Based on this formdefinition a form having one or more fields for entering paymentinformation is presented to a user in the web page at the user devicewhen the form definition is rendered by the widget. The form alsoincludes one or more reverse CAPTCHA fields having an associated value,where the reverse CAPTCHA field is not visible in a visual presentationof the form. Form definition data including an identifier associatedwith the reverse CAPTCHA field is stored at the server.

The transaction-processing engine receives a form response over thecomputer network. The form response was sent using the form and includespayment information for a requested payment transaction and a receivedvalue for the reverse CAPTCHA field. The form response data can bestored at the server.

The reverse CAPTCHA analysis engine generates an expected value for thereverse CAPTCHA field based on the identifier associated with thereverse CAPTCHA field in the form definition data, determines thereceived value for the reverse CAPTCHA field from the form response dataand compares the expected value with the received value. If the receivedvalue and the expected value do not match the payment transaction isidentified as fraudulent and a fraud prevention response form can begenerated without submitting the payment transaction to a paymentgateway.

It will be noted that while certain embodiments as discussed herein havebeen described in conjunction with form response submitted throughinteraction with a web page presented in a browser other embodiments ofthe systems and methods presented herein may be equally effectivelyutilized in the context of responses submitted through other methodssuch as an Application Programming Interface (API), a web servicesinterface or through a dedicated application (such as an “app” utilizedon a mobile device such as a smartphone or the like). All suchembodiments and uses are fully contemplated herein. Moreover, it willfurther be noted that while certain embodiments as discussed herein havebeen discussed in conjunction with a service provider for paymenttransactions, embodiments of the systems and methods disclosed hereinmay be equally effectively utilized in other contexts in a distributednetwork computer architecture. For example, reverse CAPTCHA may beutilized in almost any web page desired to determine if a response tosuch a web page has been submitted by an automated script or the like.

These, and other, aspects of the disclosure will be better appreciatedand understood when considered in conjunction with the followingdescription and the accompanying drawings. It should be understood,however, that the following description, while indicating variousembodiments of the disclosure and numerous specific details thereof, isgiven by way of illustration and not of limitation. Many substitutions,modifications, additions and/or rearrangements may be made within thescope of the disclosure without departing from the spirit thereof, andthe disclosure includes all such substitutions, modifications, additionsand/or rearrangements.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

The drawings accompanying and forming part of this specification areincluded to depict certain aspects of the disclosure. It should be notedthat the features illustrated in the drawings are not necessarily drawnto scale. A more complete understanding of the disclosure and theadvantages thereof may be acquired by referring to the followingdescription, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings inwhich like reference numbers indicate like features and wherein:

FIG. 1 is a diagrammatic representation of an architecture including anembodiment of a service provider system.

FIG. 2 is a sequence diagram showing operation of an embodiment of thesystems and methods disclosed.

FIG. 3 is a flow diagram depicting one embodiment of a method forimplementing a service provider.

FIGS. 4A-4D are diagrammatic representations of an embodiment of aschema that may be utilized with embodiments as discussed herein.

FIG. 5 is a diagrammatic representation of an architecture including anembodiment of a service provider system.

FIGS. 6A and 6B are a sequence diagram showing operation of anembodiment of the systems and methods disclosed.

FIGS. 7A and 7B are flow diagrams depicting an embodiment of a methodfor implementing fraud prevention.

FIG. 8 is a diagrammatic representation of an architecture including anembodiment of a service provider system.

FIGS. 9A and 9B are a sequence diagram showing operation of anembodiment of the systems and methods disclosed.

FIG. 10 is a diagrammatic representation of a web page including areverse CAPTCHA field.

FIG. 11 is a flow diagram depicting one embodiment of a method forimplementing reverse CAPTCHA.

FIG. 12 is a diagrammatic representation of an architecture including anembodiment of a web server system.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

Embodiments and the various features and advantageous details thereofare explained more fully with reference to the non-limiting embodimentsthat are illustrated in the accompanying drawings and detailed in thefollowing description. Descriptions of well-known starting materials,processing techniques, components and equipment are omitted so as not tounnecessarily obscure the embodiments in detail. It should beunderstood, however, that the detailed description and the specificexamples are given by way of illustration only and not by way oflimitation. Various substitutions, modifications, additions and/orrearrangements within the spirit and/or scope of the underlyinginventive concept will become apparent to those skilled in the art fromthis disclosure.

Before discussing embodiments in more detail a brief description of thecontext in which embodiments can be utilized may be helpful. Asmentioned above, methods and systems have been developed that utilize aservice provider within a distributed computer network to provide a form(which may include almost any type of displayed content, whether or notthat content includes data fields that may be filled out or completed bya user) that can be seamlessly integrated into a merchant's web page. Auser can utilize such a form to submit payment information. The serviceprovider can then submit the payment information to the payment gatewayto perform the monetary transfer, receive a result from the paymentgateway (e.g., approved, denied or some other condition) and provide aresult to the user through the merchant's web page.

Merchant's web sites that provide the ability to initiate paymenttransactions are, however, often the target of scammers (whether or notforms from a service provider are used to implement the paymenttransaction functionality of the merchant's web site). Scammerstypically use automated script to initiate payment transactions forthousands of permutations of payment information (e.g., credit cardnumbers, CCV codes, address, zip code, cardholder name, etc.) and recordwhich permutations of payment information result in a successful orcompleted payment transaction.

Each of these payment transactions is submitted to a payment gatewaywhich returns an indicator of a successful transaction, a deniedtransaction or another type of indicator. To determine whether toapprove or deny a transaction, payment gateways may employ risk scoring.However, such risk scoring is often proprietary and consequently leavesthe online commerce market with an inconsistent approach. If merchant Achooses one gateway, which has a strong risk scoring capability, butmerchant B chooses another gateway with less rigorous scoring (such as,e.g., by not tracking the originating IP address of the submission),users could be more at risk with merchant B. Additionally differentmerchants may have different settings even when utilizing the samepayment gateway. Two common examples are merchants may disable addressverification checks by the gateway to reduce the number of declinesissued by the gateway for transactions associated with the merchant, andsome merchants may not to turn on the CCV security check.

Moreover, the merchant may be charged a fee by the payment gateway foreach denied transaction regardless of the scoring methodology or otherreason employed by a payment gateway. What is desired then, is a way topro-actively determine that an online payment transaction may befraudulent before it is submitted to the payment gateway. In thismanner, any charges or other undesirable effects resulting fromsubmission of a fraudulent payment transaction (e.g., to a paymentgateway) may be substantially ameliorated.

To those ends, among others, attention is now directed to embodiments ofthe systems and methods presented herein. In particular, serviceproviders that provide forms for submission of payment transactions mayleverage their location in the distributed computer environment toimplement pro-active threat detection based on an aggregate view ofpayment transactions in that distributed computer network. In someembodiments, the inventive systems and methods provide for aggregatethreat assessment and analysis of online payment transactions, andresponses thereto, based on analysis of aggregated data obtained fromacross the distributed computer network in accordance with other onlinepayment transactions.

Specifically, embodiments of such systems and methods may operate inconjunction with a service provider that provides forms (includingpayment forms) to a number of different merchants affiliated with anumber of different payment gateways and submits payment information toa number of different payment gateways in association with those paymenttransactions. The data associated with the completed paymenttransactions (e.g., those that were submitted to the payment gateway,irrespective of whether the transaction succeeded or failed) can bestored. This aggregated data can be analyzed using a number of fraudprevention (FP) rules, where each rule evaluates the aggregated databased on an associated pattern to determine zero or more identifiersassociated with that FP rule.

The list of identifiers generated by each of the FP rules can be used bythe system in the analysis of incoming payment transaction requests.More specifically, embodiments may determine data associated with anincoming payment transaction request for one or more of the FP rules andcompare this determined data with the lists of identifiers generated byapplication of those FP rules to the aggregated data. If the datadetermined from the received payment transaction request matches anidentifier on the lists of identifiers corresponding to the FP rules, athreat may be detected. In such cases, the payment transaction may notbe sent to the payment gateway.

Additionally, certain embodiments may determine a response (e.g., aform) to send to the user from which the payment transaction request wasreceived. Such a response may be an indication of transaction success, adenial of the transaction without a cause, a denial with a cause ofincorrect information provided, an undetermined response, (e.g., notrelated to the validity of the payment information such as a systemerror), or some other response. In this manner, scammers utilizing amerchant's web site for the validation of payment information may bekept unaware both that their payment transaction request was neveractually evaluated and the actual validity of the payment information.Choosing certain responses may raise the effort threshold required bythese scammers to utilize a merchant's web site for payment informationvalidation and cause them to cease those activities, or at least tocease utilizing the merchant's web site for such activities. Thisprocedure of “scamming the scammers” will thus have the effect ofdeterring future uses of the merchant organization's web site for creditcard or other types of fraud.

Turning now to the drawings, and with particular attention to FIG. 1, adiagram of an architecture of a distributed network computer system forconducting online payment transactions that includes an embodiment of aservice provider system is disclosed. Service provider 140 is coupled touser devices 108 and merchant organizations 120 and payment gateways 130over network 198. The network 198 may be the Internet, a wide areanetwork (WAN), a local area network (LAN), an intranet, an internet, awired network, a wireless network (including a cellular network), orsome combination thereof.

Merchant organization 120 may be a for-profit or non-profit organizationthat, as part of its operations, needs to conduct online paymenttransactions. Such an organization may be, for example, a nonprofitattempting to raise money through donations. Another merchantorganization might be a social media site selling goods that celebritiesdiscuss in their posts. Yet another might be a racing event promotertaking registrations and selling related merchandise. Other types ofmerchant organizations 120 are possible and contemplated herein.

To facilitate interaction with users and conducting online paymenttransactions with these users, the merchant organization 120 may includea web server 122 and one or more web pages 126 in an associated datastore 124. Such web pages 126 may explain their mission, offer items forsale, solicit donations, etc. In particular, at least one web page 126used for conducting payment transaction may be a web page through whichthe user may provide payment information, as will be explained in moredetail later. Users may access these web pages 126 through a browser 110on user devices 108. These user devices 108 may be, for example,personal computers, laptop computers, mobile phones, watch or otherwearable, or other data processing device and may include a processor, adisplay (virtual or physical) and a user interface.

In cases where merchant organization 120 is a non-profit or charitableorganization, the merchant organization 120 may conduct discretecampaigns whereby donations may be solicited in conjunction with anevent, time period, goal, etc. Each of these campaigns may have certainassociated web pages 126, or a particular look and feel for one or moreof the web pages 126, etc. It will be understood that while embodimentsherein may be described with respect to campaigns, embodiments will beequally applicable to merchant organizations and web pages that do notutilize such campaigns to solicit donations or otherwise conduct onlinepayment transactions. While a web page 126 of the merchant organization120 solicits donations, merchant organization 120 may utilize serviceprovider 140 to provide a portion associated with the web page 126 thatallows a user to submit the actual payment information required for sucha donation (e.g., a name, credit card or bank information, amount, andthe like).

Service provider 140 includes a system data store 160 that includesmerchant data 162 (such as an object, data in a table, etc.) for amerchant organization 120. This data may include an identifier for themerchant organization 120 along with other data pertaining to themerchant organization 120. The merchant data 162 is associated with data164 for each campaign that merchant organization 120 (represented bymerchant data 162) is conducting, where such data 164 may include anidentifier for each of the campaigns being conducted by merchantorganization 120. The data 164 for a campaign is in turn associated withone or more form definition templates 170.

Each form definition template 170 may be associated with a uniqueidentifier and define the data that may be used in the construction of aform definition such as the pages, sections, questions (e.g., whatfields, types and labels of traditional form data to be entered),encoding, prefill data (e.g., what questions should be pre-filled withdata if possible) along with other options or other definitions. Theseform definition templates 170 may be at least partially defined by themerchant organization 120 to obtain the data desired by the merchantorganization or needed by a payment gateway 130 associated with themerchant organization 120 or a campaign of that organization 120.Additionally, the form definition template 170 or campaign data 164 maybe associated with a style definition (e.g., a cascading style sheet(CSS) or the like) that defines an appearance of a form created for thecampaign or created from the form definition template 170.

One or more web pages 126 provided by the merchant organization 120,including those through which payment information is to be obtained, mayinclude an embed code 128. This embed code 128 can cause the web browser110 rendering the merchant organization's web page 126 to request awidget 112 from service provider 140 (e.g., if the widget 112 is notalready present or executing on the user device 108). The embed code 128may comprise a script tag, an include tag or the like. The widget 112may include code such as JavaScript or the like, which may be executedby the browser 110 at the user's device 108. The embed code 128 may alsocontain a form identifier corresponding to a form definition template170 (which may be appropriate for a campaign being conducted by themerchant organization 120 associated with that web page 126). The widget112 sends a request for the form identifier contained in the embed code128 to the service provider 140. The widget 112 may also create a uniqueuser identifier associated with user device 108 or a user on the userdevice 108, and provide that user identifier with the form identifier inthe request to the service provider 140. Further details pertaining toembodiments of a widget may be understood with respect to U.S. Pat. No.8,370,749, entitled Secure Online Communication Through a Widget on aWeb Page, to Morse et al, issued on Feb. 5, 2013 and hereby incorporatedby reference in its entirety as if fully set forth herein.

Service provider 140 may therefore receive requests for forms fromwidget 112 where the requests include a form identifier or a useridentifier. The service provider may store user data 172 including theuser identifier and other data associated with the request (e.g., datathat may be determined about the request such as IP address, browsertype, language, encoding, etc.) in the data store 160. Service provider140 may also provide the form request to form generation engine 142.Form generation engine 142 may determine the form definition template170 associated with the form identifier contained in the request.

Form creator 144 may access data store 160 to obtain the form definitiontemplate 170 associated with the form identifier contained in the formrequest received from the widget 112. The form creator 144 may processthe form definition template 170 to generate a form definition 116.Specifically, the form creator may use the form definition template 170(and possibly any data 172 in the data store 160 about the user) togenerate the form definition 116. The form creator 144 may determinewhich questions to include in the form, which of those questions toprefill with data if it is available (and what data to utilize),globalization or internationalization data, or other data to create theform definition. The form definition 116 can thus include JavaScriptObject Notation (JSON) data that may be used to define a form.Additionally, the form definition may include one or more CSS stylesheets that may be used in the rendering of the form definition 116.

Once the form definition 116 is created by the form creator 144 it isreturned to the requesting widget 112 at the user device 108 in responseto the form request. Additionally, the form generation engine 142 storesdata 166 for the created form definition 116 in the data store 160 atthe service provider 140 in association with the user data 172 and theform definition template 170. This form definition data 166 may includedata on the questions, prefill, style, etc. of the form definition 116that was sent to the widget 112 at the user's device 108 in response tothe request.

When the widget 112 receives the form definition 116 in response to theform request, it processes the form definition 116 to render form 132 inthe rendered web page 118 presented in the browser 110. It should benoted here, that the term form as used herein is being used in a genericsense as content, regardless of whether the from 120 as presented in thebrowser 110 includes fields into which values may be entered by a useror does not include such fields.

In cases where the user is intended to enter payment informationutilizing the rendered web page 118, the form 132 may be a payment formthat includes a set of questions (e.g., fields) into which the user mayenter payment information such as card information, a card verificationvalue (CCV) number, a name, address, zip code, amount, etc. The formdata, including the payment information entered by the user, may bereturned to the service provider 140. In particular, the form data,including the payment information entered by the user into the form 132presented through the browser 110 may be received by the widget 112 andreturned to the service provider 140 using, for example, an HTTP POST orGET over SSL.

In one embodiment, communications between the service provider 140 andthe browser 110 or the widget 112 may be done via secure socket layer(SSL). However, such a link may still be susceptible to a sophisticatedman in the middle attack in a wireless access point, for example.Accordingly, in certain embodiments, at least a portion of the formresponse from the widget 112 to the service provider 140 may be a packedor encoded (collectively encoded) value, created for example, using ahash, encryption or a binary code. In this way, a man in the middle (orother) attacker will not be able to read the encoded data. So, insteadof passwords, credit card numbers, CCV numbers, or other sensitive databeing in clear text within the encrypted SSL tunnel, such data may becontained in the packed or encoded value that is passed. The widget 112and the service provider 140 are therefore provided with respectiveencoder software modules 114 that may encode or decode the value usingfor example a hashing algorithm, encryption or binary coding such thatthe form data or a portion thereof may be encoded before transmission.

Thus, in some embodiments, widget 112 includes encoder 114 forperforming the encoding or decoding process. When widget 112 is executedat the browser 110, encoder 114 implements encoding such that valuesinput by the user into form 132 may be encoded using the predeterminedencoding before they are communicated to the service provider 140 in aform response. The corresponding encoder 114 at the service provider 140may decode any encoded values to retrieve the original values. Forexample, zero, one or more, or all, values, of the form data may beencoded. Further, in some embodiments, different encodings may beapplied to different values input into the different fields of the form132. As the widget 112 is controlled and delivered by the serviceprovider 140 it may be relatively easy to change the encoding schemeutilized by encoder 114 further making the observation of encoded valuespassed between the user device 108 and the service provider 140 moredifficult.

Once the form response data, including the payment information enteredby the user, is returned to the service provider 140 (and decoded incases where any values of the form data are encoded), this user response174 (also known as a form response) including the form data may bestored in the data store 160 in association with the user identifier 172and form definition 166 originally sent to the user. Additionally, data,such as metadata, cookie data, or other data communicated during anetwork communication session, such as an IP address, browser identity,campaign identifier, organization identifier, e-mail address, useridentifier, etc., that are additionally communicated to the serviceprovider 140 with the response from the widget 112 are stored in theuser response 174. Moreover, in some embodiments, widget 112 may containor utilize an analytics module that tracks a user's interaction with theform 132. Accordingly, analytics data associated with a user'sinteraction with the form 132 may also be communicated to the serviceprovider (by widget 112 or otherwise). This analytics data may also bestored in association with user response 174.

Thus, from the data in data store 160 it is possible to determine foreach campaign 164 for each merchant 162, the users who interacted withthe campaign using associated user identifiers 172, the form definitionssent to those users (e.g., form definitions 166 associated with useridentifier 172, and form definition templates 170) and the user'sresponse to the presented form (e.g., user response 174). The serviceprovider 140 may perform a validation process on the form responseagainst the form definition 166 that was stored by the form generationengine 142 to ensure answers correspond to the questions asked, forexample, and potentially other checks with backend payment networks orreputation providers on the cardholder info, or address verificationwith US Postal service. The service provider may also perform a pricingcheck to ensure there is something to charge. If a discount has beenapplied, a best practice may be to not perform a $0 transaction as thatwould cost the merchant a transaction fee on $0.

The received payment information and any other desired form data may beprovided to transaction processing engine 152. The transactionprocessing engine 152 determines a payment gateway 130 associated withthe campaign or merchant associated with the received form responseusing the data in data store 160 (e.g., by accessing the campaign 164 ormerchant 162 data in data store 160 to determine an identifier of anassociated payment gateway 130). Payment submission engine 154 thengenerates a request to perform this payment transaction for theassociated payment gateway 130 according to the interface provided bythat payment gateway 130. This request includes the data required by thepayment gateway 130, including for example, the credit card number, bankaccount or routing number, CCV number, address, amount, zip code, etc.In one embodiment, the payment submission engine 154 includes a JavaMessaging Services (JMS) queue and a JMS consumer. The request is amessage placed on the queue, the consumer obtains messages from the JMSqueue and dispatches the message to the corresponding payment gateway130.

The payment gateway 130 includes one or more server computers associatedwith a payment service, such as Paypal, Cybersource, Auth.net, TSYS,First Data, and the like. The payment gateway 130 processes the creditcard or bank account according to the received payment transactionrequest and returns one or more transaction codes or other data. Thesetransaction codes identify the result of payment gateway 130 attemptingto perform the requested payment transaction, including for example,whether the card is declined, whether there is a hold, whether thepayment transaction was approved, etc. Such transaction codes are uniqueand proprietary to each payment gateway 130 (or payment service thatoperates the payment gateway 130). If the transaction is approved, thepayment gateway 130 will arrange for funds to be deposited with apayment settlement server, typically, a bank or credit union or othertype of card network provider.

Accordingly, the payment submission engine 154 may receive a responseform the payment gateway 130 in response to a submitted request for apayment transaction. Data 178 from the received payment gatewayresponse, including the proprietary transaction code or other datareceived from the payment gateway, can be stored in the data store 160by the transaction processing engine 152. The original payment gatewayresponse data 178 stored is associated with the user identifier 172 ofthe user who initially requested the payment transaction through theform 132, the form definition sent to that user (e.g., form definition166 associated with the user identifier 172 and form definition template170), and the user's response to the presented form (e.g., user response174).

Additionally, transaction processing engine 152 may normalize theoriginal payment gateway response to one or more codes specific to theservice provider 140. In particular, the transaction processing engine152 may normalize the proprietary transaction code provided by thepayment gateway 130 in response to the payment transaction request to anormalized transaction code utilized by the service provider system 140.These normalized codes will thus allow responses from a number ofdifferent payment gateways 130 that each may use different proprietarytransaction codes to be standardized into a set of normalizedtransaction codes used by the service provider system 140. Transactionprocessing engine 152 may thus identify a payment gateway 130 from whichthe response was received and access instructions for determining anormalized transaction code for a proprietary code from that paymentgateway 130.

Embodiments thus identify payment gateway 130, and an originaltransaction code and determine a corresponding normalized code. Forexample, for a payment gateway 130 a return code for a decline due to anunsupported card may be 2024; in some embodiments, this is normalized toDECLINE_UNSUPPORTED_CARD:

  case 2024: // Card Type Not Enabled  returnResultType.DECLINE_UNSUPPORTED_CARD;

In a different payment gateway 130, the original transaction codereturned for a decline due to an unsupported card is 17; this isnormalized to the same DECLINE_UNSUPPORTED_CARD.

-   -   case 17:    -   return ResultType.DECLINE_UNSUPPORTED_CARD;

Additional examples are set forth below. It is noted that more codes anddifferent normalizations are possible.

  case 5: // Valid amount is required  return ResultType.PLATFORM_ERROR;case 11: // Duplicate Transaction  return ResultType.PLATFORM_ERROR;case 13: // Bad credentials  return ResultType.ORGANIZATION_ERROR; case37:  return ResultType.DECLINE_INVALID_CARD_NUMBER; case 46: // Timeout return ResultType.COMMUNICATION_ERROR;

Once the original transaction code or other data received from thepayment gateway 130 is normalized, normalized gateway response data 176including the normalized transaction code is stored in the data store160 by transaction processing engine 152. The normalized payment gatewayresponse data 176 is thus associated with the original payment gatewayresponse data 178, the user identifier 172 of the user who initiallyrequested the payment transaction through the form 132, the formdefinition sent to that user (e.g., form definition 166 associated withthe user identifier 172 and form definition template 170) and the user'sresponse to the presented form (e.g., user response 174).

The service provider 140 may then communicate one or more responsemessages to the user via the widget 112 based on the response receivedfrom the payment gateway 130. In particular, the service provider 140may create a form definition for the response message using a formdefinition template 170 (or another form definition template utilized byservice provider 140 not specifically associated with the merchant 162or the campaign 164) and return this response form definition to thewidget 112, where it is rendered by the widget and presented to the userat the user device 108. The newly rendered form may, for example,replace form 120 previously presented to the user, may be rendered in apop-up window, etc. This response message may include an indication ofsuccess, a decline, a prompt for additional or different information, athank you or some other response message entirely, and it may berendered in a pop-up window, etc. It will be noted here, and will bediscussed in more detail later, that the response message returned bythe service provider 140 to the user is not necessarily congruent ordoes not necessarily (i.e., it may or may not) correspond with the typeof response received from the payment gateway 130 or normalized by theservice provider 140.

Moving now to FIG. 2, a sequence diagram illustrating one embodiment ofa sequence of communication within an architecture having componentssimilar to those of FIG. 1 is depicted. Chronological time isillustrated proceeding from the top to the bottom of FIG. 2. The user200 may access a web page of a merchant organization 120, including aweb page with payment functionality, through an input to his browser 110(reference numeral 202). This input may be a click of a link on a webpage currently being presented in the browser 110, clicking on a linkpresented in another context (e.g., in an e-mail), typing a UniformResource Location (URL) into the browser's address bar, or by some othermethod. Based on this access, the browser 110 may send a request to theserver of the merchant organization 120 for the accessed web page(reference numeral 204), which is returned to the browser 110 (referencenumeral 206). The embed code within the web page may then cause thebrowser to issue a request (reference numeral 208) for the widget toservice provider 140 (e.g., if the widget 112 is not already present orexecuting on the user device 108), which returns the widget 112 to thebrowser (reference numeral 210) where it is executed by the browser 110.Additionally, based on the form identifier contained in the embed codeof the web page, a request (reference numeral 212) for a form definition(e.g., corresponding to the form identifier or the user 200) may beissued through the browser 110 to the service provider 140.

The service provider 140 may create a form definition, store this formdefinition (reference numeral 217) and return (reference numeral 214)the form definition to the widget 112 through the browser 110 (referencenumeral 216). Widget 112 then renders the returned form definition(reference numeral 216) such that it can be presented to the userthrough the browser 110 in conjunction with the rendering andpresentation of the web page through the browser 110. Thus the contextexperienced by user 200, which is determined by the web page presentedto the user within the browser 110, may remain unchanged when widget 112renders the form in association with the web page.

The user 200 can then enter the payment information requested by theform using the fields provided by the form in the web page (referencenumeral 218). If payment information is entered into a payment form, thepayment information generally includes a payment amount and at least onepayment identifier, such as a credit card number or a bank routingnumber and bank account number, and may include additional informationsuch as a user name or identifier, user physical or electronic mailaddress, etc. The indicated payment may be made in exchange for a goodor service or may be a donation.

This payment or other information is received by the widget 112 andreturned (reference numeral 220) to the service provider 140. Thereturned form response data is stored (reference numeral 219) at theservice provider 140. Additionally, the service provider 140 may utilizethis form data to submit a request (reference numeral 224) for thepayment transaction to a payment gateway 130. The payment gateway 130will process the transaction using the payment information and returnone or more responses including a transaction code or other data to theservice provider server 140 (reference numeral 226).

The service provider 140 receives this gateway response and stores theoriginal payment gateway response (reference numeral 223) in associationwith an identifier for the user 200, the merchant organization 120, theform definition 217 sent to the user 200 and the from data 219 includingthe payment information provided by the user 200. Additionally, theservice provider 140 may normalize the original gateway response, orportions thereof, to determine a normalized service provider code orother normalized data and store such normalized response date (referencenumeral 226) in association with the identifier for the user 200, themerchant organization 120, the form definition 217 sent to the user 200,the form response data 219 including the payment information provided bythe user 200 and the original payment gateway response 223.

Thus, data for each payment transaction within the service provider 140may be associated with one or more of a user, metadata associated withthat transaction, the actual code received from the payment gateway, anormalized code determined from the received code by the serviceprovider 140 or almost any other desired information the serviceprovider 140 wishes to store in association with the payment transactionthat may be used as described below or used for other purposes orreported to other entities such as merchants, payment gateway providers,banking networks, card issuers, etc.

The service provider 140 may then communicate one or more responsemessages (reference numeral 228), such as an indication of success ordenial, an error, a request for additional information or almost anytype of response desired, to the widget 112 based on the responsereceived from the payment gateway 130. The response message may berendered (reference numeral 230) by the widget 112 to present theresponse to the user 200 through the browser 110 (reference numeral232). The presentation within the web page is accordingly updated toprovide the form including the message to user 200 while againpreserving the user's context within web page.

FIG. 3 depicts one embodiment of a method that may be implemented at aservice provider to conduct payment transactions. At step 302 theservice provider may receive a request for a widget. Such a request maybe received from a browser at a user device and result from therendering, by the browser, of a web page affiliated with a merchantorganization that utilizes the service provider to conduct paymenttransactions. Such an organization may be, for example, a nonprofitattempting to raise money through donations.

In particular, one or more web pages provided by the merchantorganization, including those through which payment information is to beobtained, may include an embed code. This embed code can cause the webbrowser of a user browsing the merchant organization's web page torequest the widget from the service provider (e.g., if the widget is notalready present or executing on the user device) such that the serviceprovider may receive the request for the widget. The widget may includecode such as JavaScript or the like, which may be executed by thebrowser at the user's device. The widget may thus be returned inresponse to the request at step 304.

The service provider may then receive a request for a form at step 306.In particular, the embed code included in the web page being rendered bya user's browser may also contain a form identifier. The widgetexecuting in association with the browser sends a request for the formidentifier contained in the embed code to the service provider. Thewidget may also create a unique user identifier associated with userdevice, or a user on the user device, and provide that user identifierwith the form identifier in the request to the service provider.

When the service provider system receives the form request at step 306,it may identify and access a form definition template associated withthe form identifier at step 308. This form definition template can thenbe utilized to generate a form definition at step 310. Specifically, inone embodiment, service provider may receive a request for a form fromthe widget where the request includes a form identifier or a useridentifier. The service provider may store user data including the useridentifier and other data associated with the form request (e.g., datathat may be determined about the request such as IP address, browsertype, language, encoding, etc.). The form definition template associatedwith the form identifier contained in the form request received from thewidget may be identified and accessed to generate a form definition.

This generation may include the determination of the questions (e.g.,fields) to include in the form, which of those questions to prefill withdata if it is available (and what data to utilize), globalization orinternationalization data, or other data to create the form definition.The form definition generated can thus include JavaScript ObjectNotation (JSON) data that may be used to define a form. Additionally,the form definition may include one or more CSS style sheets that may beused in the rendering of the form definition. Additionally, data for thecreated form definition may be stored in association with the user dataand the form definition template. This form definition data may includedata on the questions, prefill, style, etc. of the form definitiongenerated for that user. Once the form definition is generated, it isreturned to the requesting widget at the browser on the user's device atstep 312.

The widget at the user's device receives the form definition andprocesses the form definition to render the form to present to the userin the browser in association with the rendered web page. The presentedform may, for example, be a payment form that includes a set ofquestions (e.g., fields) into which the user may enter paymentinformation such as card information, a CCV number, a name, address, zipcode, amount, etc. The form data, including the payment informationentered by the user, may be returned to the service provider. Inparticular, the form data, including the payment information entered bythe user into the form presented through the browser may be received bythe widget and returned to the service provider.

The service provider may thus receive the form data at step 314 andstore the form response data at step 316. In particular, once the formresponse data, including the payment information entered by the user, isreturned to the service provider the user-provided data in the formresponse may be stored in association with the user identifier and formdefinition originally sent to the user. Additionally, data, such asmetadata, cookie data, or other data communicated during a networkcommunication session, such as an IP address, browser identity, campaignidentifier, organization identifier, e-mail address, user identifier,etc., that are additionally communicated to the service provider withthe form response may also be stored.

A payment gateway request associated with the form response receivedfrom the user may be generated at step 318. In particular, in oneembodiment a payment gateway associated with the campaign or merchantassociated with the received form response may be determined. Based onthe determined payment gateway, and the interface utilized by thatpayment gateway, a request to perform a payment transaction associatedwith the received form response may be generated and sent. This paymentgateway request may include the data required by the payment gateway toprocess the requested payment transaction, including for example, thecredit card number, bank account or routing number, CCV number, address,amount, zip code, etc.

Accordingly, the service provider may receive a gateway response fromthe payment gateway as result of the submitted request for a paymenttransaction at step 320. Data from the received payment gatewayresponse, including a proprietary transaction code or other datareceived from the payment gateway, can be stored at step 322. Thisstored original payment gateway response data is associated with theuser identifier of the user who initially requested the paymenttransaction through the form, the form definition sent to that user, andthe user's response to the presented form.

Additionally, the service provider may normalize the received originalpayment gateway response to one or more codes specific to the serviceprovider at step 324 and store this normalized gateway response. Thesenormalized codes will thus allow responses from a number of differentpayment gateways, that each may use different proprietary transactioncodes, to be standardized into a set of normalized transaction codesused by the service provider system. Transaction processing engine maythus identify the payment gateway from which the original paymentgateway response was received and access a mapping of possibletransaction codes for that payment gateway and normalized transactioncodes used by the service provider system to determine a normalizedtransaction code to store for the normalized gateway response at step326. The stored normalized payment gateway response data is thusassociated with the original payment gateway response data, the useridentifier of the user who initially requested the payment transactionthrough the form, the form definition sent to that user, and the user'sresponse to the presented form.

The service provider may then send one or more response messages to theuser at step 328 based on the response received from the paymentgateway. In particular, the service provider may create a formdefinition for the response message using a form definition template andreturn this response form definition to the widget where it is renderedby the widget and presented to the user at the user device. The newlyrendered form with the response message may, for example, replace theform previously presented to the user, may be rendered in a pop-upwindow, etc. This response message may include an indication of success,a decline, a prompt for additional or different information, a thank youor some other response message entirely.

It will be helpful to an understanding of embodiments as presentedherein to briefly discuss an example of normalized transaction codesthat may be utilized by embodiments as presented herein. In Appendix Aexamples of some of these normalized transaction codes are presented.Specifically, the “Normalized Code” column of the table in Appendix Aincludes examples of the normalized transaction codes that may bedetermined for one or more corresponding proprietary transaction codesreturned from a payment gateway. The “Description” column indicates ameaning for each of the normalized transaction code, and the “Display”column includes a message or description of a type of message that maybe returned to be displayed to a user in the case a payment transactioninitiated by the user through a form results in a transaction code froma payment gateway that is normalized to the normalized transaction codein the “Normalized Code” column.

It may also be useful to discuss embodiments of the storage of formdefinition templates, form definition data, campaign data, form data,payment gateway data, etc. that may be utilized by a service provider.FIGS. 4A-4D depict one embodiment of a schema for a database that may beutilized in conjunction with embodiment of an service provider asdiscussed above.

Turning first to FIG. 4A, one embodiment of a schema for the storage ofdata relating to campaigns and directories is depicted. In this schema,a schema for a campaign 402, a form definition template 404 and a formdefinition 406, among others, is depicted. In FIG. 4B, one embodiment aschema for a form question 408, a form section 410, form settings 412,among others, are depicted. FIG. 4C depicts one embodiment of a schemafor a form response 414 and gateway credentials 416 for an associatedgateway among others, while FIG. 4D depicts one embodiment of a schemafor a gateway request 418 and a gateway response 420.

Now that an embodiment of a service provider has been described, alongwith embodiments of how such a service provider may be utilized inassociation with a merchant's web site to provide the ability to conductpayment transactions through the merchant organization's web site, itwill be helpful to recall the above discussion of the fraudulent use ofweb sites offering such payment functionality. In particular, web siteswith payment functionality are often the target of scammers whotypically use automated scripts in conjunction with the paymentfunctionality offered on the web site (e.g., through a form or API) toinitiate thousands of payment transactions for different permutations ofpayment information (e.g., credit card numbers, CCV codes, address, zipcode, cardholder name, etc.) and record which permutations of paymentinformation result in a successful or completed payment transaction.

In the context of embodiments where a service provider implementspayment functionality on the merchant organization's web page, each ofthese payment transactions is received by the service provider (e.g., ina form response or through an API offered by the service provider) who,in turn, submits the payment transaction to a payment gateway. In manycases, when a scammer is utilizing an automated script a large number ofthese payment transactions (e.g., on the order of hundreds, thousands,or tens of thousands) may be declined by the payment gateway(s) to whichthey are submitted.

This is highly problematic for a variety of reasons. First, andimportantly, the merchant may be charged a fee by the payment gatewayfor each denied transaction. The fees associated with such denials,especially in the case where thousands or more of these paymenttransactions are submitted in a short time frame, can severely impactthe finances of the merchant organization. Moreover, from a functionalstandpoint, the submission of the requests by an automated script, thereception and processing of the high volume of submissions, and thestorage of data associated with the denied request can severely impactthe performance (e.g., speed, memory usage, etc.) of computing devicesinvolved in the payment transaction on the distributed computer network,causing slow response times, excessive memory usage and other problemsthat may impact the performance and functionality of the computerdevices or networks involved in these payment transactions. Suchperformance problems in this network-centric environment may, in turn,cause potential customers or legitimate donors to experience friction inconducting such online payment transactions (e.g., donations to amerchant organization) and may even cause them to cancel, or not engagein, such payment transactions.

It is thus desired by participants in such payment transactions tosubstantially reduce the network-centric problems, monetary consequencesor other undesirable effects resulting from submission of fraudulentpayment transaction (e.g., to a payment gateway). Embodiments of serviceproviders may therefore include functionality to pro-actively determinethat an online payment transaction may be fraudulent before it issubmitted to the payment gateway.

To those ends, among others, attention is now directed to embodiments ofthe systems and methods presented herein. In particular, serviceproviders that provide forms for submission of payment transactions mayleverage their location in the distributed computer environment toimplement pro-active threat detection based on an aggregate view ofpayment transactions in that distributed computer network. In someembodiments, therefore, service providers may perform threat assessmentand analysis of online payment transactions, and responses thereto,based on analysis of aggregated data obtained from across thedistributed computer network in accordance with other online paymenttransactions.

Specifically, embodiments of such systems and methods may operate inconjunction with a service provider that provides forms (includingpayment forms) to a number of different merchants affiliated with anumber of different payment gateways and submits payment information tothose different payment gateways in association with those paymenttransactions. The data associated with the completed paymenttransactions can be stored at the service provider. This aggregated datacan be analyzed using a number of fraud prevention (FP) rules, whereeach rule evaluates the aggregated data based on an associated patternto determine zero or more identifiers associated with that FP rule.

The list of identifiers generated by each of the FP rules can then beused by the system in the analysis of incoming payment transactionrequests. More specifically, embodiments may determine data associatedwith an incoming payment transaction request for a FP rule (e.g., an IPaddress, a financial identity, etc.) and compare the determined data forthe rule with the lists of identifiers generated by application of thoseFP rules to the aggregated data. If the data determined from thereceived payment transaction request (e.g., identifier) matches anidentifier on the lists of identifiers corresponding to the FP rules, athreat may be detected. In such cases, the payment transaction may notbe sent to the payment gateway.

Additionally, certain embodiments may determine a response (e.g., aform) to send to the user from which the payment transaction request wasreceived. Such a response may be an indication of transaction success, adenial of the transaction without a cause, a denial with a cause ofincorrect information provided, an undetermined response, (e.g., notrelated to the validity of the payment information such as a systemerror), or some other response. In this manner, scammers utilizing amerchant's web site for the validation of payment information may bekept unaware both that their payment transaction request was neveractually evaluated and the true nature of the payment information,thinking that the payment information was valid or invalid, regardlessof the true nature of the validity of the payment information. Choosingcertain responses may raise the effort threshold required by thesescammers to utilize a merchant's web site for payment informationvalidation and cause them to cease those activities, or at least tocease utilizing the merchant's web site for such activities. Thisprocedure of “scamming the scammers” will thus have the effect ofdeterring future uses of the merchant organization's web site for creditcard or other types of fraud.

FIG. 5 depicts a diagram of an architecture of a distributed networkcomputer system for conducting online payment transactions that includesan embodiment of a service provider system that performs pro-activethreat assessment and analysis of online payment transactions. Certaincomponents of the architecture given the same reference numerals ascorresponding components in FIG. 1 may function substantially similarlyto the description given above and will not be elaborated on in moredetail except to explain any different or additional functionality thatmay be included with such components.

As described above, service provider 540 is coupled to user devices 108,merchant organizations 120 and payment gateways 130 over network 198.One or more web pages 126 provided by the merchant organization 120,including those through which payment information is to be obtained, mayinclude an embed code 128. This embed code 128 can cause the web browser110 rendering the merchant organization's web page 126 to request awidget 112 from service provider 540. The embed code 128 may alsocontain a form identifier corresponding to a form definition template170. The widget 112 sends a request for the form identifier contained inthe embed code 128 to the service provider 540.

Service provider 540 may therefore receive requests for forms fromwidget 112 where the requests include a form identifier or a useridentifier. The service provider may store user data 172 including theuser identifier and other data associated with the request (e.g., datathat may be determined about the request such as IP address, browsertype, language, encoding, etc.) in the data store 160. Service provider540 may also provide the form request to form generation engine 142.Form generation engine 142 may determine the form definition template170 associated with the form identifier contained in the request. Theform creator 144 may process the form definition template 170 togenerate a form definition 116. Once the form definition 116 is createdby the form creator 144, it is returned to the requesting widget 112 atthe user device 108 in response to the form request. Additionally, theform generation engine 142 stores data 166 for the created formdefinition 116 in the data store 160 at the service provider 540. Thewidget 112 processes the form definition 116 to render form 132 in therendered web page 118 presented in the browser 110

In cases where the user is intended to enter payment informationutilizing the rendered web page 118 the form 132 may be a payment formthat includes a set of questions (or fields) into which the user mayenter payment information such as card information, a card verificationvalue (CCV) number, a name, address, zip code, amount, etc. The formdata, including the payment information entered by the user, may bereturned to the service provider 540. Once the form response data,including the payment information entered by the user, is returned tothe service provider 540, this user response 174 (also known as a formresponse) including the form data may be stored in the data store 160 inassociation with the user identifier 172 and data 166 for the formdefinition originally sent to the user. Additionally, data, such asmetadata, cookie data, or other data communicated during a networkcommunication session, such as an IP address, browser identity, campaignidentifier, organization identifier, e-mail address, user identifier,etc., that are additionally communicated to the service provider 540with the response from the widget 112 are stored in the user response174.

The received payment information and any other desired form data may beprovided to transaction processing engine 552. The transactionprocessing engine 552 may determine a payment gateway 130 associatedwith the campaign or merchant associated with the received form responseusing the data in data store 160 and submit the payment transaction tothe payment gateway 130 using payment submission engine 554. If thepayment transaction is submitted to the payment gateway 130, thetransaction processing engine 552 may receive a response from thepayment gateway 130 (known also as a gateway response) in response to asubmitted request for a payment transaction. Data 178 from the receivedpayment gateway response, including the proprietary transaction code orother data received from the payment gateway 130, can be stored in thedata store 160 by the transaction processing engine 552. The originalpayment gateway response data 178 stored is associated with the useridentifier 172 of the user who initially requested the paymenttransaction through the form 132, the form definition sent to that user(e.g., form definition data 166 associated with the user identifier 172and form definition template 170), and the form response to thepresented form (e.g., user response 174).

Additionally, transaction processing engine 552 may normalize theoriginal payment gateway response to one or more codes specific to theservice provider 540. This normalized gateway response data 176including the normalized transaction code is stored in the data store160 by transaction processing engine 552. The normalized payment gatewayresponse data 176 is thus associated with the original payment gatewayresponse data 178, the user identifier 172 of the user who initiallyrequested the payment transaction through the form 132, the data 166 forthe form definition sent to that user and the user's response to thepresented form (e.g., user response 174).

Accordingly, the system data store 160 may contain a wealth ofaggregated data regarding payment transactions that have occurred in thedistributed network computing environment, including data on paymenttransactions that were approved or declined, the IP addresses from whichthose payment transactions were initiated, data on the users (e.g.,name, credit card information, addresses, country of origin, etc.) whoinitiated the payment transactions, the velocity (e.g., frequency) oftransaction requested from a location (e.g., IP address, country, etc.),and a wide variety of other data. The aggregated data in system datastore 160, or portions thereof, is collected during, and as a directresult of, the payment transactions being conducted on the distributedcomputer network and was produced as a direct result of conducting thosetransactions on such a distributed computer network. The aggregated datain the system data store 160 can thus be utilized in the serviceprovider system 540 to provide threat assessment and analysis of paymenttransactions occurring in that distributed computer network.

In particular, service provider 540 may include embodiments of a fraudprevention engine 548 and fraud prevention data store 580. Embodimentsof fraud prevention engine 548 may operate substantially asynchronouslyfrom other components (e.g., form generation engine 142, transactionprocessing engine 552, etc.) of the service provider 540. In otherwords, fraud prevention engine 548 or components thereof may execute ata time interval or triggered by another means such as a programmaticrequest or environmental change (e.g., every 5 minutes, every half hour,every hour, every night, every week, command line program, HTTPSrequest, etc.) that is not dependent on the timing or operation of theseother components.

Fraud prevention data store 580 may include one or more FP rules 582. Aswill be explained in more detail later, each FP rule 582 may includeinstructions to evaluate data in system data store 160 to determine setsof data that matched a pattern and for each set of data that matched thepattern, produce and store an identifier corresponding to the matchingset of data. Thus, each FP rule 582 may produce a corresponding FP list584 that contains one or more identifiers for sets of data that matchedthe pattern of that FP rule 582. These FP rules 582 may, for example, bea SQL procedure that obtains one or more tables in the system data store160 and based on data in the table(s) that matches the pattern,determines identifiers (e.g., IP addresses, names, credit card numbers(last four digits, institution/bank issuing number, etc.), somecombination thereof, etc.) based on the data in the tables.

For example, in some embodiments, an FP rule 582 might have a patternfor identifying more than ten declines associated with the same IPaddress in one hour. For each set of data identified by the FP rule 582,the IP address may be placed in an FP list 584 corresponding to the FPrule 582. In some embodiments, pattern of the FP rule 582 may have apattern for identifying that the ten declines identified are from asingle campaign, across several campaigns, across several merchantorganizations or gateways, etc.

As another example, in some embodiments, an FP rule 582 might have apattern for identifying if multiple payment transaction requests haveused different zip codes for the same address. For each set of dataidentified by the FP rule 582, the IP address may be placed in an FPlist 584 corresponding to the FP rule 582. Other patterns for FP rules582 may be employed. As an additional example, a pattern may verify thatthe zip/postal code for a payment transaction request matches the cityreferenced in a submission, while other patterns may specify that a callor request should be made to a registered card network service or anissuing bank service to determine data about a payment transactionassociated with data in data store 160. Thus, embodiments advantageouslyexamine both data originating from the user (e.g., from user devices108) and data originating from the payment gateways 130, banks or otherthird parties on the distributed computer network, in performing fraudprevention. While other examples of such FP rules 582 will be given inmore detail at a later point, many other embodiments of FP rules 582 arepossible and all such rules are fully contemplated herein.

Fraud prevention engine 548 contains FP rule execution engine 550 thatexecutes each of FP rules 582 at a time interval, on-demand, or per someevent trigger (e.g., every 10 minutes, hourly, daily, HTTP(S) request,change in environment, boot time of the machine, etc.). Each FP rule 582may be executed by the FP rule execution engine 550 at the same timeinterval, each FP rule 582 may be executed according to a different timeinterval, or some combination. Accordingly, during execution, FP ruleexecution engine 550 may obtain the FP rule 582 and that FP rule 582 mayexecute by obtaining sets of data from system data store 160,determining if any of those sets of data match the pattern of that ruleand producing the identifiers of the sets of data that match the patternof the rule as corresponding FP list 584. In one embodiment, for one ormore FP rules 582, each identifier in the corresponding FP list 584 maybe associated with an expiration time stamp denoting a time period afterwhich that identifier in the FP list 584 may no longer be utilized orshould no longer be considered a restriction on the payment request.

These FP lists 584 containing identifiers associated with potentiallyfraudulent transactions may be utilized during the processing ofincoming payment transactions to perform pro-active fraud prevention by,for example, stopping potentially fraudulent payment transactions fromever reaching the payment gateway 130 itself. In one embodiment, whentransaction processing engine 552 receives payment information and anyother desired form data for a requested payment transaction, thetransaction processing engine 552 may perform such a fraud preventionanalysis before such a payment transaction is submitted to paymentgateway 130. In particular, the payment information and other form datafor the incoming payment transaction may be provided to FP analysisengine 556.

FP analysis engine 556 may determine an identifier corresponding to theincoming payment transaction for each of the FP rules 582 based on thepayment information or other form data for the incoming paymenttransaction. The identifier created for the incoming payment transactioncorresponding to a particular FP rule 582 may be of the same format(e.g., contain the same data or type of data) as each identifier in theFP list 584 corresponding to the FP rule 582. The data, or type, of anidentifier for each FP rule 582 may be determined by FP analysis engine556 utilizing that FP rule 582, the corresponding FP list 584, byconfiguration data previously established (e.g., by an administrator ofservice provider system 540) or by some other method. For example, ifthe FP list 584 for that FP rule 582 includes a set of IP addresses, theFP analysis engine 556 may determine the IP address of the incomingpayment transaction; if the FP list 584 for that FP rule 582 includesthe last 4 digits of the credit card, plus the expiration date of thecard, the FP analysis engine 556 may create an identifier for theincoming payment transaction comprising the last 4-digits of the creditcard of the incoming transaction combined with the expiration date ofthe card for the incoming transaction.

For each FP rule 582, FP analysis engine 556 may compare the currentidentifier associated with the incoming payment transaction against thelist of identifiers contained in the corresponding FP list 584 todetermine if the current identifier matches any of the identifiers ofthe FP list 384. If the current identifier matches one of the list ofidentifiers in the FP list 584 the incoming payment transaction may beidentified by transaction processing engine 552 as a fraudulenttransaction. This identification may include placing a flag or otherdata in system data store 160 in association with the data 174 for theform response that requested the payment transaction that indicates therequested payment transaction associated with that form response hasbeen identified as potentially fraudulent. In the cases where anidentifier of the FP list 584 is associated with an expiration timestamp, the time of the incoming payment transaction (e.g., at which itwas received) may be compared with the expiration time stamp, and if thetime of the incoming payment transaction is after the expiration timestamp the incoming transaction may not be flagged as a fraudulenttransaction.

If the incoming transaction has not been flagged as fraudulent (e.g.,the identifier(s) created for the incoming payment transactioncorresponding to each FP rule 582 do not match any identifier in thecorresponding FP list 584), the transaction processing engine 552 maythen determine a payment gateway 130 associated with the incomingpayment transaction and submit the payment transaction to the paymentgateway 130 using payment submission engine 554 as previously discussed.Additionally, in some embodiments, even if the incoming paymenttransaction has been flagged as fraudulent by FP analysis engine 556,there may be one or more “whitelisted” identifiers (e.g., merchantidentifiers, campaign identifiers, IP addresses, etc.) for whichincoming payment transactions should be submitted to the payment gateway130, even in cases where the incoming payment transaction has beenflagged by FP analysis engine 556 as fraudulent. The transactionprocessing engine 552 may obtain the corresponding identifier associatedwith the incoming payment transaction (e.g., the merchant identifier,campaign identifier, IP address, etc. associated with the incomingtransaction) and if the identifier for the incoming payment transactionmatches an identifier on the whitelist, the incoming payment transactionmay be submitted to the payment gateway 130 regardless of whether theincoming payment transaction was previously flagged as fraudulent.

If, however, the incoming payment transaction has been identified (e.g.,flagged) as fraudulent by the transaction processing engine 552, aresponse may be sent back to the user at the user device 108, withoutever submitting the requested payment transaction to a payment gateway130. The response that is sent in such cases may be almost any responsedesired. In certain embodiments, such a response may be chosen to alert,or avoid alerting, a user at the user devices that may be a fraudulentuser such as a scammer or the like, that his behavior has been detected.As noted herein, the response sent to the user may be congruent with thedetermination of the fraud prevention analysis engine 556, (e.g., adenial, or a reason for denial, when the incoming payment request hasbeen identified as fraudulent) or the response may be incongruent (e.g.,an indication of success when the incoming payment request has beenidentified as fraudulent). For example, while some embodiments may sendback a simple “Fail” or “Decline” message, other embodiments may attemptto “scam the scammer” by sending back illegitimate confirmationmessages. That is, in some embodiments, a user whose requested paymenttransaction has been identified as fraudulent may receive a positivemessage indicating that the transaction went through.

In particular, in certain embodiments, the service provider 540 maycommunicate one or more response messages to the user via the widget 112intended for potentially fraudulent users. In particular, the serviceprovider 540 may create a FP form definition for the response messageusing a FP form definition template 585 (or another form definitiontemplate 170 that may be associated with the merchant 162 or thecampaign 164) and return this response form definition to the widget112, where it is rendered by the widget and presented to the user at theuser device 108. The newly rendered form may, for example, replace form132 previously presented to the user, may be rendered in a pop-upwindow, etc. This response message may again include an indication ofsuccess (despite that the payment transaction was never submitted to thepayment gateway 130), a decline (again, despite that the paymenttransaction was never submitted to the payment gateway 130), an errormessage (e.g., an indication that a system or communication error hasoccurred) or some other response. In other embodiments, the FP formdefinition created may include a random message may be selected orsimple card invalid message. Other messages are possible and arecontemplated herein.

By utilizing response messages that are not necessarily congruent withthe determinations made at the service provider 540 and that may, or maynot, be consistent in similar instances, the fraudulent user submittingsuch payment requests will not receive a reliable and consistent answerfrom the service provider system 540. As such, the fraudulent user mayhave an incorrect view of the validity of the payment information (e.g.,believing payment information is valid when it is not or vice versa) andmay not be able to make a determination about what processing does, ordoes not, occur once such payment information is submitted. By imposingthese additional obstacles to fraudulent users, these fraudulent usersmay be dissuaded or deterred from fraudulently utilizing web sites ofmerchant organizations 120 that utilize the service provider 540.

Looking now at FIGS. 6A and 6B a sequence diagram illustrating oneembodiment of a sequence of communication within an architecture havingcomponents similar to those of FIG. 5 is depicted. Chronological time isillustrated proceeding from the top to the bottom of FIGS. 6A and 6B.The user 600 may access a web page of a merchant organization 120,including a web page with payment functionality, through an input to hisbrowser 110 (reference numeral 602). Based on this access, the browser110 may send a request to the server of the merchant organization 120for the accessed web page (reference numeral 604), which is returned tothe browser 110 (reference numeral 606). The embed code within the webpage may then cause the browser to issue a request (reference numeral608) for the widget to service provider 540 which returns the widget 112to the browser where it is executed by the browser 110 (referencenumeral 610). Additionally, based on the form identifier contained inthe embed code of the web page, a request (reference numeral 612) for aform definition (e.g., corresponding to the form identifier or the user600) may be issued through the browser 110 to the service provider 540.

The service provider 540 may create a form definition, store data forthis form definition (reference numeral 617) in the system data store160 and return (reference numeral 614) the form definition to the widget112 through the browser 110 (reference numeral 616). Widget 112 thenrenders the returned form definition (reference numeral 616) such thatit can be presented to the user through the browser 110 in conjunctionwith the rendering and presentation of the web page through the browser110. The user 600 can then enter the payment information requested bythe form using the fields provided by the form in the web page(reference numeral 618). If payment information is entered into apayment form, the payment information generally includes a paymentamount and at least one payment identifier, such as a credit card numberor a bank routing number and bank account number, and may includeadditional information such as a user name or identifier, user physicalor electronic mail address, etc.

This payment or other information is received by the widget 112 andreturned (reference numeral 620) to the service provider 540. Thereturned form data is stored (reference numeral 619) at the serviceprovider 540 in the system data store 160. Rule execution engine 550 maybe executing at a certain time interval. The FP rule execution engine550 may access the FP rules in the FP data store 580 (reference numeral682) and access the data in system data store (reference numeral 680) toapply these FP rules to the data stored therein. The FP lists generatedby the application of these FP rules to the data in the system datastore 160 may be stored in the FP data store (reference numeral 684).

Accordingly, when the form response requesting a payment transaction isreceived (reference numeral 620), the FP lists in the FP data store 580can be accessed (reference numeral 621) and the identifiers contained inthe FP lists can be compared with identifiers generated for thecorresponding FP rules from the form data for the requested paymenttransaction to determine if the payment transaction should be identifiedas fraudulent (reference numeral 623).

If the payment transaction is identified as fraudulent the serviceprovider 540 can determine a response message (reference numeral 625)and communicate the response messages (reference numeral 622), such asan indication of success or denial, an error, a request for additionalinformation or almost any type of response desired, to the widget 112.

If the payment transaction is not identified as fraudulent (or, in oneembodiment, determined to be on the whitelist), service provider 540 mayutilize the form data of the payment transaction to submit a request(reference numeral 624) for the payment transaction to a payment gateway130. The payment gateway 130 will process the transaction using thepayment information and return one or more responses including atransaction code or other data to the service provider server 540(reference numeral 626).

The service provider 540 receives this gateway response and stores theoriginal payment gateway response (reference numeral 627) in associationwith an identifier for the user 600, the merchant organization 120, theform definition sent to the user 600 and the form data including thepayment information provided by the user 600. Additionally, the serviceprovider 540 may normalize the original gateway response, or portionsthereof, to determine a normalized service provider code or othernormalized data and store such normalized response data (referencenumeral 629) in the data store 160 in association with the identifierfor the user 600, the merchant organization 120, the form definitionsent to the user 600, the form data including the payment informationprovided by the user 600 and the original payment gateway response. Theservice provider 540 may then communicate one or more response messages(reference numeral 628), such as an indication of success or denial, anerror, a request for additional information or almost any type ofresponse desired, to the widget 112 based on the response received fromthe payment gateway 130. The response message returned by the serviceprovider 540 may be rendered (reference numeral 630) by the widget 112to present the response to the user 600 through the browser 110(reference numeral 632).

FIGS. 7A and 7B depict one embodiment of a method for fraud preventionthat may be implemented at a service provider. Referring first to FIG.7A, one embodiment of a method for the determination of identifiers foruse in fraud prevention is depicted. Embodiments of this method may beutilized substantially asynchronously to other functionality of aservice provider. In particular, for each of the fraud prevention rulesthat may be currently configured for a service provider system, at step702 it can be determined if a time interval has passed. Such a timeinterval may be associated with only that particular FP rule, may beassociated with all FP rules, may be associated with a group of FPrules, etc. If the time interval has not passed since the last time thatFP rule was evaluated, that FP rule may not be evaluated. If however,the time interval (e.g., since the last time the FP rule was evaluated)has elapsed the FP rule may be evaluated. Each FP rule may includeinstructions to evaluate data stored by the service provider system todetermine sets of data that matched a pattern and for each set of datathat matched the pattern, produce and store an identifier correspondingto the matching set of data. These FP rules may, for example, be a SQLprocedure that obtains one or more tables in the system data store andbased on data in the table(s) that matches the pattern, determinesidentifiers (e.g., IP addresses, names, credit card numbers (last fourdigits, etc.), some combination, etc.) based on the data in the tables.

For example, one FP rule may have a pattern that identifies a set ofdata where the same credit card (e.g., identified by the last fourdigits of the credit card number and the same cardholder name) has beenused to submit multiple payment transactions, where at least two paymenttransactions are for different amounts and have been declined by apayment gateway, and where that credit card number is associated with asuccessful result (e.g., transaction approved) from a payment gateway inthe last hour.

As another example, a FP rule may include a pattern that identifies aset of data where the same IP address is associated with submittedpayment transaction, where for all payment transactions associated withthat IP address within the last day there were no successful submissionsof an associated payment transaction to a payment gateway and there weremore than ten failed submissions of payment transactions associated withthat IP address to a payment gateway.

Accordingly, at step 704 the data stored at the service provider may beaccessed and the FP rule evaluated against the set of data to determinesets of data that match the pattern FP rule. Based on the sets of dataidentified as matching the pattern of the FP rule, at step 706 a list ofidentifiers for each of the matching sets of data may be generated andstored at step 708. These identifiers may include a data from each ofthe sets of matching data identified at step 704. For example, anidentifier may include an IP address, some combination of the cardnumber (e.g., last four digits of the card), the expiration date,cardholder name (or portion thereof), zip code, or another identifier.

These FP lists containing identifiers associated with potentiallyfraudulent transactions identified by evaluation of the FP rules may beutilized during the processing of incoming payment transactions toperform pro-active fraud prevention by, for example, stoppingpotentially fraudulent payment transactions from ever reaching a paymentgateway. FIG. 7B depicts one embodiment of a method for using the FPlists in such pro-active fraud prevention. As discussed, the embodimentof the method of FIG. 7B may be performed asynchronously to theembodiment of the method of the FIG. 7A. Thus, the FP rules (andcorresponding FP lists) may be created or updated at almost any scheduledesired to, for example, change the FP rules themselves, to make surethat the FP lists are created on a more or less frequent basis, or for awide variety of other reasons, and that the FP lists so created orupdated may be utilized substantially immediately in preventing fraud byintegrating these lists in the processing of incoming paymenttransaction requests substantially as they are created or updated.

Initially, at step 702 the service provider may receive a request forthe widget. The widget may thus be returned in response to the requestat step 704. The service provider may then receive a request for a format step 706. When the service provider system receives the form requestat step 706 it may identify and access a form definition templateassociated with the form identifier at step 708. This form definitiontemplate can then be utilized to generate a form definition at step 710.Once the form definition is generated, it is returned to the requestingwidget at the browser on the user's device at step 712.

The widget at the user's device receives the form definition andprocesses the form definition to render the form to present to the userin the browser in association with the rendered web page. The presentedform may, for example, be a payment form that includes a set ofquestions (e.g., fields) into which the user may enter paymentinformation such as card information, a CCV number, a name, address, zipcode, amount, etc. The form response data, including the paymentinformation entered by the user, may be returned to the serviceprovider. In particular, the form response data, including the paymentinformation entered by the user into the form presented through thebrowser may be received by the widget and returned to the serviceprovider.

The service provider may thus receive the form data at step 714 andstore the form data of the response at step 716. In particular, once theform data, including the payment information entered by the user isreturned to the service provider the user-provided data in the formresponse may be stored in association with the user identifier and formdefinition originally sent to the user. Additionally, data, such asmetadata, cookie data, or other data communicated during a networkcommunication session, such as an IP address, browser identity, campaignidentifier, organization identifier, e-mail address, user identifier,etc., that are additionally communicated to the service provider withthe form response may also be stored.

It can then be determined at step 718 if the incoming paymenttransaction requested by the form response is fraudulent. Specifically,in making such a determination, for each of the FP lists present in theservice provider system, that FP list may be accessed at step 720 and anidentifier to compare to that FP list may be generated for the incomingpayment transaction at step 722. The identifier created for the incomingpayment transaction corresponding to a particular FP list may be of thesame format (e.g., contain the same data or type of data) as eachidentifier in the FP list. The data, or type, of an identifier for eachFP list may be determined utilizing that FP rule that created the FPlist, the corresponding FP rule, by configuration data previouslyestablished or by some other method

The current identifier generated for the incoming payment transactionmay be compared, at step 724 to the identifiers contained in the FP listto determine if the current identifier matches any of the identifiers ofthe FP list. If the current identifier matches one of the list ofidentifiers in the FP list the incoming payment transaction may beidentified as a fraudulent transaction at step 726. This identificationmay include placing a flag in association with data for the formresponse that requested the payment transaction that indicates therequested payment transaction associated with that form response hasbeen identified as potentially fraudulent.

After all the FP lists have been processed, if the incoming transactionhas been flagged as fraudulent at step 728 (e.g., the identifier(s)created for the incoming payment transaction corresponding to each FPlist matches an identifier in the FP list), a response to the receivedform response may be determined at step 730 and returned to the user whoinitiated the payment transaction through the form response at step 732without ever submitting the payment transaction to a payment gateway.The response that is sent in such cases may be almost any responsedesired. In certain embodiments, such a response may be chosen to alert,or avoid alerting, a user at the user devices that may be a fraudulentuser such as a scammer or the like, that his behavior has been detected.

In particular, in certain embodiments, a service provider may create aFP form definition for the response message using a FP form definitiontemplate and return this response form definition to the widget at theuser's device, where it is rendered by the widget and presented to theuser at the user device. This response message may include an indicationof success (despite that the payment transaction was never submitted tothe payment gateway), a decline (again, despite that the paymenttransaction was never submitted to the payment gateway), an errormessage (e.g., an indication that a system or communication error hasoccurred) or some other response.

Returning to step 728, if the payment transaction has not beenidentified as fraudulent it may be submitted to a payment gateway atstep 732 substantially as detailed above. In one embodiment, a flowmight include checking the identifier of the incoming form responseagainst any whitelist(s) and then proceeding to step 728 if there is amatch of that identifier in the whitelist.

After reading the above description it will be noted that embodiments ofcertain fraud prevention systems and methods as described prevent fraudby utilizing aggregated data from across the distributed computernetwork obtained in conjunction with other payment transactions. Whilethe embodiments described are extremely effective in preventing fraud,it may also be desired to implement fraud prevention systems and methodsthat may operate within the context of a single payment transaction.Specifically, it may be desired to implement systems and methods thatmay be utilized in conjunction with forms presented to a user todetermine if that user is fraudulent. While certain mechanisms may beused with the web pages (e.g., of a merchant organizations or formstherein) to determine if it is a human user (e.g., and not an automatedscript) interacting with the web page, these often provide impediments(or “friction”) that may deter legitimate users. For example, CAPTCHAtype systems require a user to manually identify an image or text andenter corresponding information into an entry window. If the image ortext presented matches the information typed by the user, then the useris deemed a human user (i.e., not a script) and may proceed. Oftenhowever, such images or text presented for CAPTCHA are indecipherableand require more than one entry by the user. Moreover, scammers are nowutilizing automated scripts that are sophisticated enough to pull textdata out of CAPTCHA images to enter into the CAPTCHA field. To combatthis, the CAPTCHA images have become more complex, creating a viciouscycle of ever increasing image complexity (and thus ever increasing userdifficulty). Additionally, the use of CAPTCHA images may present animpediment to a blind user; an auditory reading of the CAPTCHA data maypresent an impediment to use of the web site by a deaf user, etc.

In these types of cases, legitimate users (e.g., potential donors in thecase where a merchant organization is a charitable or non-profitorganization) are likely to simply give up utilizing the web site (andthe merchant organization may thus lose a potential donation). Even whenCAPTCHA text and images are decipherable, however, it has been foundthat they present an impediment in part because they are an additionalstep not related to the desired transaction, thus causing additional“friction.” According to some studies, the likelihood of a first timedonor making a donation through a web site falls fifty percent for eachadditional screen or page requiring user input or interaction.

Accordingly, embodiments of the fraud prevention methods and systemspresented here may configure a web page (or a form appearing therein)that determines that users are actually an automated script (i.e., anon-human user machine processing the web page in order to generate aresponse). More particularly, in one embodiment, a web page includingone or more “invisible” questions (or fields) may be generated inresponse to a request for the web page. These invisible fields arefields included in the code of the web page that are not visible to ahuman user when the web page is rendered by a browser and presented tothe user. While not visible in the rendered web page being presented tothe user (and thus not requiring any attention or input by the user),such invisible fields may nevertheless be identified by an automatedscript processing the code of the web page (e.g., identified by theautomated script as a field that needs to contain a value or a value ofa particular type). If a value (or incorrect, different, etc. value) forsuch an invisible field is received through a web page including such aninvisible field the user interacting with the web page may be identifiedas potentially fraudulent (e.g., it may be an automated script).Embodiment of these techniques are thus referred to as “reverse CAPTCHA”as, rather than requiring a user to verify themselves as human as inCAPTCHA, embodiments allow the user to implicate itself as an automatedscript. Embodiments of this reverse CAPTCHA may thus be utilized in thecontext of a single payment transaction to prevent fraud in associationwith that payment transaction. Moreover, embodiments of reverse CAPTCHAmay be used in tandem with embodiments of fraud prevention systems andmethods as described above that use aggregated data to further increasethe efficacy of fraud prevention techniques implemented in a distributednetwork architecture.

FIG. 8 depicts a diagram of an architecture of a distributed networkcomputer system for conducting online payment transactions that includesan embodiment of a service provider system that performs reverseCAPTCHA. While embodiments of reverse CAPTCHA are depicted inconjunction with systems and method for conducting online paymenttransaction, it will be noted that other embodiments of reverse CAPTCHAsystem and methods may be effectively utilized in almost any distributedcomputer network environment where it is desired to determine orvalidate users of web pages in the network environment. Again, certaincomponents of the architecture given the same reference numerals ascorresponding components in FIG. 1 may function substantially similarlyto the description given above and will not be elaborated on in moredetail except to explain any different or additional functionality thatmay be included with such components.

Here, service provider 840 is coupled to user devices 108, merchantorganizations 120 and payment gateways 130 over network 198. Merchantorganization 120 may be a for-profit or non-profit organization that, aspart of its operations, needs to conduct online payment transactions. Tofacilitate interaction with users and conducting online paymenttransactions with these users, the merchant organization 120 may includea web server 122 and one or more web pages 126 in an associated datastore 124. Users may access these web pages 126 through a browser 110 onuser devices 108. Merchant organization 120 may utilize service provider840 to provide a portion associated with the web page 126 that allows auser to submit the actual payment information required for paymenttransactions (e.g., a name, credit card or bank information, amount, andthe like).

Service provider 840 includes a system data store 160 that includesmerchant data 162 (such as an object, data in a table, etc.) for amerchant organization 120 and data 164 for each campaign of thatmerchant organization 120. The data 164 for a campaign is in turnassociated with one or more form definition templates 170. Each formdefinition template 170 may be associated with a unique identifier anddefine the data that may be used in the construction of a formdefinition such as the pages, sections, questions (e.g., what fields,types and labels of traditional form data to be entered), encoding,prefill data (e.g., what questions should be pre-filled with data ifpossible) along with other options or other definitions. These formdefinition templates 170 may be at least partially defined by themerchant organization 120 to obtain the data desired by the merchantorganization or needed by a payment gateway 130 associated with themerchant organization 120 or a campaign of that organization 120.Additionally, the form definition template 170 or campaign data 164 maybe associated with a style definition (e.g., a cascading style sheet(CSS) or the like) that defines an appearance of a form created for thecampaign or created from the form definition template 170.

One or more web pages 126 provided by the merchant organization 120,including those through which payment information is to be obtained, mayinclude an embed code 128. This embed code 128 can cause the web browser110 rendering the merchant organization's web page 126 to request awidget 112 from service provider 840. The embed code 128 may alsocontain a form identifier corresponding to a form definition template170 (which may be appropriate for a campaign being conducted by themerchant organization 120 associated with that web page 126). The widget112 sends a request for the form identifier contained in the embed code128 to the service provider 840. The widget 112 may also create a uniqueuser identifier associated with user device 108 or a user on the userdevice 108, and provide that user identifier with the form identifier inthe request to the service provider 840.

Service provider 840 may therefore receive requests for forms fromwidget 112 where the requests include a form identifier or a useridentifier. The service provider 840 may store user response data 174including the user identifier 172 and other data associated with therequest (e.g., data that may be determined about the request such as IPaddress, browser type, language, encoding, etc.) in the data store 160.Service provider 840 may also provide the form request to formgeneration engine 842. Form generation engine 842 may determine the formdefinition template 170 associated with the form identifier contained inthe request.

Form creator 844 may access data store 160 to obtain the form definitiontemplate 170 associated with the form identifier contained in the formrequest received from the widget 112. The form creator 844 may processthe form definition template 170 to generate an initial form definition.Specifically, the form creator may use the form definition template 170(and possibly any data 172 in the data store 160 about the user) togenerate the initial form definition. The form creator 844 may determinewhich questions to include in the form, which of those questions toprefill with data if it is available (and what data to utilize),globalization or internationalization data, or other data to create theform definition. The initial form definition can thus include JavaScriptObject Notation (JSON) data that may be used to define a form.Additionally, the initial form definition may include one or more CSSstyle sheets that may be used in the rendering of the initial formdefinition.

Once the form creator 844 creates the initial form definition, it can beprocessed by reverse-CAPTCHA (RC) engine 846. RC engine 846 may modifythe initial form definition created by the form creator 844 to includeone or more reverse CAPTCHA fields. Specifically, RC data store 886includes one or more RC rules 888. Each of these RC rules 888 mayinclude a question definition 890 defining a field (e.g., a field typeor name). The rule 888 also includes a value definition 892 defining ifa field for that rule 888 should have no value or a value (e.g., initialor default) associated with it; and if a value is associated with thefield what that value should be (or how to create such a value).Associated with that value definition 892 may be a validation definition896 defining how a value returned in the field from a user should bevalidated based on value definition 892. A hiding definition 894 for therule may specify how a field defined by the rule 888 may be hidden frompresentation to the user when a browser 110 renders a web page includinga field in accordance with the rule 888. These rules 888 may begenerated by an administrator of the service provider system 840 (e.g.,using an administrator interface, not shown) and stored in the RC datastore 886. These rules 888 may be created or updated asynchronously tothe functioning of the remainder of the service provider system 840 andmay be updated frequently in order to increase the effort required bydevelopers of automated scripts to determine or otherwise circumvent oradapt to the reverse CAPTCHA fields included in web pages based on suchrules 888. Embodiments of such rules 888 or aspects thereof will bediscussed in more detail herein at a later point.

Accordingly, RC engine 846 may access RC data store 886 and select oneor more rules 888 to utilize. In one embodiment, which rule(s) 888 andthe number of rules 888 selected by RC engine 846 may be substantiallyrandom, such that every time RC engine 846 processes an initial formdefinition the rules 888 (and number thereof) utilized may be random.Utilizing a random selection process may again increase the effortrequired by developers of automated scripts to determine or otherwisecircumvent or adapt to the reverse CAPTCHA fields included in web pagesbased on such rules 888 as different reverse CAPTCHA fields may beincluded in different forms and different instances of the same form(e.g., even when the same web page is reloaded in the same browser 110).

Once RC engine 846 has selected one or more RC rules 888 to utilize, foreach rule 888 selected the RC engine 846 modifies the initial formdefinition to include the field defined by the question definition 890of the rule 888, including any value for that field as defined by thevalue definition 892. The RC engine 846 also modifies the initial formdefinition to include code for hiding the field according to the hidingdefinition 894 of the rule 888. The modification of the initial formdefinition to include such a field or value may include inserting JSONdata into the initial form definition (e.g., that defines field with aname, type or value) or a style definition into a CSS of the formdefinition (e.g., that defines how a field is to be hidden”).

Once the initial form definition has been modified by the RC engine 846to include the reverse CAPTCHA fields, the form definition 816(including the reverse CAPTCHA fields) is returned to the requestingwidget 112 at the user device 108 in response to the form request.Additionally, the form generation engine 842 stores data 866 for thecreated form definition 816 in the data store 160 at the serviceprovider 840 in association with the user data 172 and the formdefinition template 170. This form definition data 866 may include dataon the questions, prefill, style, etc. of the form definition 816 thatwas sent to the widget 112 at the user's device 108 in response to therequest. In particular, the form definition data 866 may include RC ruleidentifier(s) 868 that each are associated with a corresponding rule 888that was utilized to include reverse CAPTCHA fields in the formdefinition 816 returned to the user. In some embodiments, a ruleidentifier 868 may be associated with a value given to the reverseCAPTCHA field created based on that rule 888 in the form definition 816.Such a value may be included in the form definition data 866 when, forexample, it may be difficult or impossible to recreate such a valuebased on the value definition 892 of the rule 888, other form definitiondata 866 or a received form response.

When the widget 112 receives the form definition 816 in response to theform request, it processes the form definition 816 to render form 820 inthe rendered web page 118 presented in the browser 110. Such a renderingmay occur by generating code that can be presented by the browser 110.In cases where the user is intended to enter payment informationutilizing the rendered web page 118 the form 820 may be a payment formthat includes a set of questions (e.g., fields) into which the user mayenter payment information such as card information, a card verificationvalue (CCV) number, a name, address, zip code, amount, etc. The form 820may also include one or more reverse CAPTCHA fields that are not visibleon form 820 (e.g., because they are hidden, not displayed, behind otherelements of the form, displayed in a location that is not displayable,etc.). In cases where a user is a human user, the user will only be ableto see and complete the displayed fields on the form (e.g., not thehidden reverse CAPTCHA fields of the form 820).

As discussed above, however, in the case where the user entering datainto the fields of the form 820 is an automated script, the automatedscript may process the code of the form 820 (e.g., the HTML or othercode generated by the widget 112 that caused the browser 110 to presentthe form 820 in the web page 118). When the code for the form 820 isprocessed, the reverse CAPTCHA fields included in the code for the form820 may be detected, despite that such reverse CAPTCHA fields would notbe visible to a user viewing the form 820 in the web page 118. Thus, anautomated script processing the code of form 820 and attempting tocomplete the fields of form 820 to submit payment information mayprovide values for these reverse CAPTCHA fields, either by includingvalues for such fields or by changing the initial or default value of areverse CAPTCHA field.

In either scenario, this form data, including the payment information ordata for other fields, entered by the user or otherwise, may be returnedto the service provider 840. In particular, the form data, including thepayment information entered by the user into the form 820 presentedthrough the browser 110 may be received by the widget 112 and returnedto the service provider 840 using, for example, an HTTPS POST. Incertain embodiments, at least a portion of the form response from thewidget 112 to the service provider 840 may be an encoded value, createdfor example, using a hash, encryption or a binary code. So, instead ofpasswords, credit card numbers, CCV numbers, or other sensitive databeing in clear text, such data may be contained in the encoded valuethat is passed. The widget 112 and the service provider 840 aretherefore provided with respective encoder software modules 114 that mayencode or decode the value using for example a hashing algorithm,encryption or binary coding such that the form data or a portion thereofmay be encoded before transmission. By encoding the form data passedbetween the widget 112 and the service provider 840 in this manner, theeffort required by developers of automated scripts to determine orotherwise circumvent or adapt to the reverse CAPTCHA fields included inweb pages may be increased significantly, as the observation of anyreverse CAPTCHA fields and any values associated therewith included in aform may be made substantially more difficult (e.g., as they arecommunicated between the widget 112 and the service provider 840).

Once the form response data, including the payment information enteredby the user and any values for the reverse CAPTCHA fields, is returnedto the service provider 840 (and decoded in cases where any values ofthe form data are encoded), this user response 174 (also known as a formresponse) including the form data may be stored in the data store 160 inassociation with the user identifier 172 and form definition 866originally sent to the user.

The received payment information and any other desired form data,including any values for the reverse CAPTCHA fields may be provided totransaction processing engine 852. The transaction processing engine 852may provide the form data to RC analysis engine 858. RC analysis engine858 may access the form definition 866 corresponding to the formdefinition 816 for the form through which the form data was generated.In particular, the RC analysis engine 858 may access the RC ruleidentifier(s) 868 to determine which RC rules 888 were utilized toinclude reverse CAPTCHA fields in the form definition 816. For each ofthe RC rule identifiers 868, the RC analysis engine 858 may determinethe field using the question definition 890 to determine the value(which may be an empty value) for that reverse CAPTCHA field in the formdata. Moreover, the validation definition 896 of the rule 888 may beused by RC analysis engine 858 to determine an expected value for thereverse CAPTCHA field and compare it with the value for that field inthe form data to determine the user who submitted the form data was anautomated script. In many cases, if there is a value in the form datafor a reverse CAPTCHA field that had no value (i.e., an empty field) oran initial or default value for the reverse CAPTCHA field has beenchanged, it can be determined that the form response was submitted by anautomated script.

In certain embodiments, the validation definition 896 may define, forthat RC rule 888 how to validate the value for the corresponding reverseCAPTCHA field returned in the form data to determine if the returnedvalue in the form data indicates that the user who submitted the formdata was an automated script. Specifically, the validation definition896 for a rule 888, may define how to generate an expected value forcomparison (e.g., which may be an empty value) based on the valuedefinition 892 for that rule 888 and compare that excepted value withthe value received in the form data for the reverse CAPTCHA fielddefined using that rule 888. For example, in cases where the valuedefinition 892 indicates that a reverse CAPTCHA field should not have avalue, the validation definition 896 may define an expected value thatis empty and determine if any value was returned in the correspondingreverse CAPTCHA field in the form response. As another example, in caseswhere a value for a reverse CAPTCHA field may be a timestamp of dateinformation, the validation definition 896 may define how an expectedvalue for such a timestamp or date information can be created forcomparison and determine if the value for that reverse CAPTCHA field inthe form data matches the expected value.

If the expected value for an RC rule 888 does not match the value forthe corresponding reverse CAPTCHA field included in the form data theincoming payment transaction may be identified by transaction processingengine 852 as a fraudulent transaction. This identification may includeplacing a flag or other data in system data store 160 in associationwith the data 174 for the form response that requested the paymenttransaction that indicates the requested payment transaction associatedwith that form response has been identified as potentially fraudulent.If the incoming transaction has not been flagged as fraudulent (e.g.,the values for the reverse CAPTCHA fields in the form response match theexpected values for those fields created based on the RC rules 888 usedto generate those fields), the transaction processing engine 852 maythen determine a payment gateway 130 associated with the incomingpayment transaction and submit the payment transaction to the paymentgateway 130 using payment submission engine 854 as previously discussed.

If however, the incoming payment transaction has been identified (e.g.,flagged) as fraudulent by the transaction processing engine 852, aresponse may be sent back to the user at the user device 108, withoutever submitting the requested payment transaction to a payment gateway130. The response that is sent in such cases may be almost any responsedesired. In certain embodiments, such a response may be chosen to alert,or avoid alerting, a user at the user devices that may be a fraudulentuser such as a scammer or the like, that his behavior has been detected.As noted above the response may indicate success when the incomingpayment request has been identified as fraudulent, may include a fail ordecline message, may attempt to “scam the scammer” by sending backillegitimate confirmation messages, or may send back some otherresponse.

In particular, in certain embodiments, the service provider 840 maycommunicate one or more response messages to the user via the widget 112intended for potentially fraudulent users. In particular, the serviceprovider 540 may create a RC form definition for the response messageusing a RC form definition template 885 (or another form definitiontemplate 170 that may be associated with the merchant 162 or thecampaign 164) and return this response form definition to the widget112, where it is rendered by the widget and presented to the user at theuser device 108. The newly rendered form may, for example, replace form820 previously presented to the user, may be rendered in a pop-upwindow, etc. This response message may again include an indication ofsuccess (despite that the payment transaction was never submitted to thepayment gateway 130), a decline (again, despite that the paymenttransaction was never submitted to the payment gateway 130), an errormessage (e.g., an indication that a system or communication error hasoccurred) or some other response. In other embodiments, the RC formdefinition created may include a random message or a simple invalid cardmessage. Other messages are possible and are contemplated herein.

In this way, the fraudulent user will not receive a reliable answer fromthe service provider system 840 and because the fraudulent user does notactually know whether the payment information they submitted with thepayment transaction request may no longer attempt to use the serviceprovider system 840 or web sites of merchant organizations 120 thatutilize the service provider 840.

In FIGS. 9A and 9B a sequence diagram illustrating one embodiment of asequence of communication within an architecture having componentssimilar to those of FIG. 8 is depicted. Chronological time isillustrated proceeding from the top to the bottom of FIGS. 9A and 9B.The user 900 may access a web page of a merchant organization 120,including a web page with payment functionality, through an input to hisbrowser 110 (reference numeral 902). Based on this access, the browser110 may send a request to the server of the merchant organization 120for the accessed web page (reference numeral 904), which is returned tothe browser 110 (reference numeral 906). The embed code within the webpage may then cause the browser to issue a request (reference numeral908) for the widget to service provider 540 which returns the widget 112to the browser where it is executed by the browser 110. Additionally,based on the form identifier contained in the embed code of the webpage, a request (reference numeral 912) for a form definition (e.g.,corresponding to the form identifier or the user 900) may be issuedthrough the browser 110 to the service provider 840.

The service provider 840 may create an initial form definition, and thisinitial form definition provided to the RC engine 846 (reference numeral917_. The RC engine 846 may access the RC data store 866 to select oneor more RC rules contained therein (reference numeral 919). In oneembodiment, the selection of the RC rules may be randomized as to boththe number of RC rules selected and which RC rules are selected. Oncethe RC rules to apply have been selected the initial form definition maybe modified according to the selected RC rules (reference numeral 921).As discussed, the initial form definition may be modified to include thereverse CAPTCHA fields and any value for that field as defined byselected RC rules, where the initial form definition is also modified tohide those fields according to the respective selected RC rule.

The service provider 840 can store data for this form definition(reference numeral 923) in the system data store 160 and return(reference numeral 914) the form definition (as modified by the RCengine 846) to the widget 112 through the browser 110 (reference numeral916). Widget 112 then renders the returned form definition (referencenumeral 916) such that it can be presented to the user through thebrowser 110 in conjunction with the rendering and presentation of theweb page through the browser 110. The user 900 can then enter thepayment information requested by the form using the fields provided bythe form in the web page (reference numeral 918). If payment informationis entered into a payment form, the payment information generallyincludes a payment amount and at least one payment identifier, such as acredit card number or a bank routing number and bank account number, andmay include additional information such as a user name or identifier,user physical or electronic mail address, etc.

This payment or other information is received by the widget 112 andreturned (reference numeral 920) to the service provider 840. Thereturned form data is stored (reference numeral 925) at the serviceprovider 840 in the system data store 160. Accordingly, when the formresponse requesting a payment transaction is received (reference numeral920), the RC rules used to create reverse CAPTCHA fields in the formutilized by the user to provide the form response can be determined byaccessing the form definition associated with that form response in thesystem data store 160 (reference numeral 927) and identify the RC rulesutilized from that stored form definition (reference numeral 929). TheRC rules used to create the reverse CAPTCHA fields can then be used tovalidate the values of the returned form data corresponding to thosereverse CAPTCHA fields (reference numeral 931).

For each of the RC rules identified, a value (which may be an emptyvalue) for that reverse CAPTCHA field in the form data as received(reference numeral 920) may be determined. An expected value for thereverse CAPTCHA field may also be determined. Such an expected value maybe stored in system data store 160 in the stored form definition or maybe determined utilizing the corresponding RC rule. The expected valuemay be compared with the value for that reverse CAPTCHA field asreceived in the form data to determine if the user who submitted theform data was an automated script (reference numeral 933). In manycases, if there is a value in the form data for a reverse CAPTCHA fieldthat had no value (i.e., an empty field) or an initial or default valuefor the reverse CAPTCHA field has been changed, it can be determinedthat the form response was submitted by an automated script.

If the payment transaction is identified as being submitted by a userwhich is an automated script (reference numeral 933) the serviceprovider 840 can determine a response message (reference numeral 935)and communicate the response messages (reference numeral 922), such asan indication of success or denial, an error, a request for additionalinformation or almost any type of response desired, to the widget 112.

If the payment transaction is not identified as being submitted by anautomated script the service provider 840 may utilize the form data ofthe payment transaction to submit a request (reference numeral 924) forthe payment transaction to a payment gateway 130. The payment gateway130 will process the transaction using the payment information andreturn one or more responses including a transaction code or other datato the service provider server 840 (reference numeral 926).

The service provider 840 receives this gateway response and stores theoriginal payment gateway response (reference numeral 937) in associationwith an identifier for the user 900, the merchant organization 120, theform definition sent to the user 900 and the form data including thepayment information provided by the user 900. Additionally, the serviceprovider 840 may normalize the original gateway response, or portionsthereof, to determine a normalized service provider code or othernormalized data and store such normalized response data (referencenumeral 939) in the data store 160 in association with the identifierfor the user 900, the merchant organization 120, the form definitionsent to the user 900, the form data including the payment informationprovided by the user 900 and the original payment gateway response. Theservice provider 840 may then communicate one or more response messages(reference numeral 928), such as an indication of success or denial, anerror, a request for additional information or almost any type ofresponse desired, to the widget 112 based on the response received fromthe payment gateway 130. The response message returned by the serviceprovider 840 may be rendered (reference numeral 930) by the widget 112to present the response to the user 900 through the browser 110(reference numeral 932).

FIG. 10 depicts an example web page 1000 that may be rendered on auser's computer. The web page 1000 may include merchant organizationcontent 1002 as well as the rendered form definition 1004. As can beseen, the rendered form definition includes fields 1006 corresponding tofields (e.g., fields for entering payment information includingtraditional credit card information) that are visible to a human user.In addition, in accordance with embodiments, a hidden field 1008 isincluded in the rendered form definition 1004. The hidden field 1008 mayinclude a label 1012 (e.g., “CCV2”) as well as the entry field 1010itself. Because it is hidden, as indicated by the dashed lines, a humanuser does not see it. However, automated script that scans the code ofthe web page (e.g., HTML, JSON objects, etc.) would likely identify itas requiring an entry.

Referring to FIG. 11, one embodiment of a method for reverse CAPTCHAthat may be implemented at a service provider is depicted. Initially, atstep 1102 the service provider may receive a request for the widget. Thewidget may thus be returned in response to the request at step 1104. Theservice provider may then receive a request for a form at step 1106.When the service provider system receives the form request at step 1106,it may identify and access a form definition template associated withthe form identifier at step 1108. This form definition template can thenbe utilized to generate an initial form definition at step 1110. Theinitial form definition can then be modified to include one or morereverse CAPTCHA fields at step 1112.

In one embodiment, a set of RC rules to utilize for the modification ofthe initial form definition may be determined at step 1114. Theselection of how many, and which, RC rules to utilize may besubstantially random. In one embodiment, each of the RC rules mayinclude a “should use” definition indicating whether that RC rule shouldbe utilized. This “should use” definition can, for example, be afunction that performs a mathematical operation or the like on asubstantially random number such as a unique identifier (e.g., anidentifier for a form definition or a user) and determines if theassociated rule should be used based on the result of that operation.Thus, each time the form definition “should use” definition of a rule isexecuted the result of the execution will indicate if that RC ruleshould be utilized. Thus, in this embodiment, executing the “should use”definition of each RC rule may perform the selection of the RC rules toapply.

Once the one or more RC rules to utilize are selected the initial formdefinition may be modified according to each of the selected RC rules atstep 1116. In particular, in one embodiment, each of the RC rules mayinclude a question definition defining a field (e.g., a field type orname). An RC rule also includes a value definition defining if a fieldfor that rule should have no value or a value (e.g., initial or default)associated with it; and if a value is associated with the field whatthat value should be (or how to create such a value). A hidingdefinition for the rule may specify how a field defined by the RC rulemay be hidden from presentation to the user. For each RC rule selectedthen, the initial form definition may be modified to include the fielddefined RC rule, including any value for that field as defined by the RCrule. The initial form definition is also modified such that it isconfigured, when rendered, to hide the field according to the hidingdefinition of the RC rule.

Once the initial form definition has been modified to include thereverse CAPTCHA fields, the form definition (including the reverseCAPTCHA fields) is returned to the user device in response to the formrequest at step 1118. Additionally, data for the form definition isstored at step 1120. The data stored for the form definition includesdata for identifying each of the RC rules used to modify the initialform definition to include the RC fields as utilized at step 1116.

The widget at the user's device receives the form definition andprocesses the form definition to render the form to present to the userin the browser in association with the rendered web page. The presentedform may, for example, be a payment form that includes a set ofquestions (e.g., fields) into which the user may enter paymentinformation such as card information, a CCV number, a name, address, zipcode, amount, etc. Additionally, each of the RC fields as included inthe form definition are rendered by the widget and included in the formpresented to the user. However, because such fields are hidden they arenot visible to a user viewing the presented form in the browser.

As such, in cases where a user is human user, the user will only be ableto see and will only complete (e.g., provide data for) the visiblefields on the form presented in the browser (e.g., not the hiddenreverse CAPTCHA fields of the form). Conversely, in the case where theuser entering data into the fields of the form is an automated script,the automated script may process the code of the form and detecting thereverse CAPTCHA fields included in the code for the form, despite thatsuch reverse CAPTCHA fields would not be visible to a user viewing theform in the browser. Thus, an automated script processing the code ofthe form and attempting to complete the fields of form to submit paymentinformation may provide values for these reverse CAPTCHA fields, eitherby including values for such fields or by changing the initial ordefault value of a reverse CAPTCHA field.

The form response data, including the values entered into the fields ofthe form, may be returned to the service provider at step 1122. Inparticular, the form response data, including the payment informationentered by the user into the form or values for the RC fields includedin the form may be received by the widget and returned to the serviceprovider. It can then be determined at step 1124 if an automated scriptsubmitted the incoming payment transaction in the form response.

Specifically, in making such a determination, the stored form definitiondata associated with that form response may be obtained at step 1126.This form definition data includes data identifying each of the RC rulesutilized to generate the form definition used to provide the formthrough which the data of the incoming form response was submitted. Foreach of the RC rules identified utilizing the data for the formdefinition, a value (which may be an empty value) for the reverseCAPTCHA field corresponding to that rule in the form data as receivedmay be determined at step 1128. An expected value for the reverseCAPTCHA field may also be determined at step 1130. Such an expectedvalue may be stored in the system data store in the stored formdefinition or may be determined utilizing the corresponding RC rule. Theexpected value may be compared to the received value for that reverseCAPTCHA field to determine if the user who submitted the form data wasan automated script. Specifically, if the expected and received valuesdo not match the incoming payment transaction may be identified asfraudulent at step 1132. This identification may include placing a flagin association with data for the form response that requested thepayment transaction that indicates the requested payment transactionassociated with that form response has been identified as potentiallyfraudulent.

In particular, in one embodiment, the RC rule may include a validationdefinition defining how a value returned in the field from a user shouldbe validated based on value definition. In particular, the validationdefinition may be a function that can determine the value of the RCfield as returned in the form data and generate the expected value forthe RC field for that form response for that RC rule and compare theexpect value with the received value for that reverse CAPTCHA field todetermine if the user who submitted the form data was an automatedscript. Thus, in this embodiment, for each RC rule identified throughthe form definition the corresponding validation definition may beexecuted to determine if the if the user who submitted the form data wasan automated script.

After all the identified RC rules have been processed, If the incomingpayment transaction has been flagged as fraudulent at step 1134 (e.g.,for at least one RC rule the expected value for a corresponding reverseCAPTCHA field does not match the received value in the form response forthat reverse CAPTCHA field), a response to the received form responsemay be determined at step 1136 and returned to the user who initiatedthe payment transaction through the form response at step 1138 withoutever submitting the payment transaction to a payment gateway. Theresponse that is sent in such cases may be almost any response desired.In certain embodiments, such a response may be chosen to alert, or avoidalerting, a user at the user devices that may be a fraudulent user suchas a scammer or the like, that his behavior has been detected.

In particular, in certain embodiments, a service provider may create anRC form definition for the response message using an RC form definitiontemplate and return this response form definition to the widget at theuser's device, where it is rendered by the widget and presented to theuser at the user device. This response message may include an indicationof success (despite that the payment transaction was never submitted tothe payment gateway), a decline (again, despite that the paymenttransaction was never submitted to the payment gateway), an errormessage (e.g., an indication that a system or communication error hasoccurred) or some other response.

Returning to step 1134, if the payment transaction has not beenidentified as fraudulent it may be submitted to a payment gateway atstep 1140 substantially as detailed above.

It may now be useful discuss embodiments of RC rules, or aspects thereofin more detail. In particular it may be useful to discuss the ways thatreverse CAPTCHA fields may be hidden. In some embodiments, for example,a reverse CAPTCHA field can be hidden using a DisplayNone tag; inothers, a reverse CAPTCHA field could be positioned off screen. In stillothers, a reverse CAPTCHA field could be made “light” with a more opaquefield over it. In another embodiment, a reverse CAPTCHA field can bevisible as a replacement field that matches the “real” field's display,then applies one of the other display rules to the “real” field. Whendata is collected, the “real” field will get populated with this field'svalue

As but one example, the HTML for a reverse CAPTCHA field (e.g., asrendered by a widget at a user's browser) may appear as follow:

<input name=“myarg” value=“myvalue” type=“hidden”>

If the above is utilized in a form, the data myarg=myvalue will besubmitted as the reverse CAPTCHA field and the associated value in aform response (e.g., along with the other data submitted), assuming thevalue is not altered.

In another embodiment, a sort order may be specified as a hidden field.For example, shown below is an example of a form where the default sortorder is specified as a hidden field.

 <form method=″get″ id=″searchform″ action=″http://www.klroo.org/″> <ahref=″http://www.klroo.org/newsletter/″ class=″klroo-social-link″><img src=″http://www.klroo.org/wp-content/themes/klroo/images/newsletter-icon.png″></a><a href=″http://www.facebook.com/KLROOAustinPBS″ target=″_blank″class=″klroo-  social-link″><imgsrc=″http://www.klroo.org/wp-content/themes/klroo/images/fb- icon.png″></a> <a href=″https://twitter.com/klroo″ target=″_blank″class=″klroo-social-link″ style=″margin-  right:12px;″><imgsrc=″http://www.klroo.org/wp-content/themes/klroo/images/tw- icon.png″></a> <label for=″s″ class=″assistive-text″>SearchKLROO</label> <input type=″text″ class=″field″ name=″s″ id=″s″placeholder=″Search KLROO″ /> <input type=″submit″ class=″submit″name=″submit″ id=″searchsubmit″ value=″Search  KLROO″ /> <!--<inputtype=″hidden″ name=″order″ value=″desc″ /> <input type=″hidden″name=″orderby″ value=″post_date″ />--> </form>

As other examples, Appendix B depicts examples of how RC fields may behidden Appendix C depicts examples of how the values for RC fields maybe generated and Appendix D depicts examples of RC rules that may beutilized to modify form definitions, generate values for those fields,validate values received for those fields, etc.

It will be noted that while embodiments of providing one or more reverseCAPTCHA fields have been discussed in the context of providing a paymentform through a merchant's web page for payment transactions, otherembodiments that utilize reverse CAPTCHA may be effectively applied inalmost any context that utilizes web pages in a distributed computernetwork environment. For example, embodiments of reverse CAPTCHA may beeffectively utilized in conjunction with web servers that providecontent such as web pages in response to requests (e.g., from browsersor apps on a mobile device, etc.). In certain embodiments, a web servermay receive a request for content (e.g., web page, etc.), where areverse CAPTCHA field as discussed may be included in the content thatis returned in response to the request. This reverse CAPTCHA field maybe incorporated into a relatively static web page (e.g., the field andvalue may be pre-determined and included in the code for the web pagethat is stored and served in response to multiple requests). Thus, insuch cases, it may be relatively easy to determine, for each responsereceived, what an excepted value for the RC field in a response to suchweb page should be.

As noted above, however, while such an embodiment may give some abilityto detect use of an automated script in conjunction with those webpages, dynamically or randomly determining a reverse CAPTCHA field(e.g., field, value, how it is to be hidden, etc.) may provide greaterresistance against discovery and circumvention of the use of reverseCAPTCHA. Accordingly, when a request for content is received at a webserver, the requested content may be retrieved based on the request andprovided to a reverse CAPTCHA engine. The reverse CAPTCHA engine maydetermine a reverse CAPTCHA field or value as discussed above and modifythe requested content to include this reverse CAPTCHA field (and value,etc.). The modified content may then be provided to the requestingdevice.

The reverse CAPTCHA field (and associated value, etc.) may be stored atthe web server in association with identifying information associatedwith the received request such as the received request itself, the useror user device from which the request was received, etc. The reverseCAPTCHA field and identifying information may be stored, for example, insession data in association with the received request or providedresponse, in a data store associated with the user, etc.

While the reverse CAPTCHA field may be included in the content sent inresponse to the request, when the content is rendered at the requestinguser's device the reverse CAPTCHA field is not visible in the visualpresentation of the content. Accordingly, when a response to themodified content is received at the web server an expected value for thereverse CAPTCHA field can be determined (e.g., as discussed above) andwith the received value to determine if the response has been providedby an automated script.

FIG. 12 depicts one embodiment of a web server that utilizes reverseCAPTCHA. Here, a web server 1240 coupled to one or more user devices1208 over a network 1298 includes a system data store 1260 having one ormore web pages 1226. Based on a user interaction, a redirect, or otherinputs or instructions, browser 1210 may issue a request for a web page1226 to web server 1240. The web server engine 1242 may receive thisrequest. The web server engine 1242 may access the web page 1226, asstored in system data store 1260 and return the web page 1226 to thebrowser 1210 in response to the request. It will be noted that returningof the web page 1226 may include returning all associated code orcontent in conjunction with web page 1226, include any code or contentcreated by, for example, executing any server side code or scripts thatmay be utilized to dynamically create or include code associated withweb page 1226, etc. The browser 1210 can then render the returned webpage to the user at the user device 1242.

For a variety of reasons it may be desired to include a reverse CAPTCHAfield in the returned web page. In such cases, the web server engine1242 obtains the initial web page 1226 to return in response to areceived request for the web page 1226. Once the initial web page 1226is obtained it can then be processed by RC engine 1246 to produce amodified web page including an RC field to return in response to therequest. Specifically, RC engine 1246 may modify the initial web page1226 to include a reverse CAPTCHA field. In one embodiment, RC datastore 1286 includes one or more RC rules 1288. Each of these RC rules1288 may include a question definition defining a field (e.g., a fieldtype or name), a value definition defining if a field for that rule 1288should have no value or a value (e.g., initial or default) associatedwith it, and, if a value is associated with the field, what that valueshould be (or how to create such a value). Additionally, a validationdefinition may be associated with the RC rule 1288. This validationdefinition may define how a value returned in the field in a responsefrom a user should be validated based on a value definition. A hidingdefinition for the rule 1288 may specify how a field defined by the rule1288 may be hidden from presentation to the user when a web pageincluding a field in accordance with the rule 1288 is rendered by abrowser 1110.

Accordingly, RC engine 1246 may access RC data store 1286 and select oneor more rules 1288 to utilize. In one embodiment, which rule(s) 1288 andthe number of rules 1288 selected by RC engine 1246 may be substantiallyrandom, such that every time RC engine 1246 modifies a web page 1226 therules 1288 (and number thereof) utilized may be random. Once RC engine1246 has selected one or more RC rules 1288 to utilize, for each rule1288 selected the RC engine 1246 modifies the initial web page 1226 toinclude the field and value defined by the rule 1288 where the field(e.g., and value) are configured to be hidden according to the hidingdefinition of the rule 1288 when the modified web page is visuallydisplayed.

Once the initial web page 1226 has been modified by the RC engine 1246to include the reverse CAPTCHA field, the modified web page (includingthe reverse CAPTCHA fields) is returned to the requesting browser 1210at the user device 1208 in response to the initial request received fromthe browser 1210. Additionally, the web server engine 1242 stores data1266 for the RC field included in the modified web page in the datastore 1260 at the web server 1240. This data 1266 for the RC field may,for example, be included in the session data associated with a sessionbeing maintained in association with the browser 1210 at the user device1208 or a user of user device 1208. Generally, the data 1266 for the RCfield may be maintained in almost any manner that allows identificationof, for example, the rule 1288 used to generate the RC field included inthe modified web page returned or the RC field and associated valueincluded in the modified web page.

When the browser 1210 receives the modified web page in response to theinitial request, it renders the modified web page to present therendered web page 1218. Here, the rendered modified web page 1218includes RC field 1220 and an associated value, however, the RC field1220 is not visible on web page 1218 visually presented in the browser1210 (e.g., either because RC field 1220 is hidden, not displayed,behind other elements of the form, displayed in a location that is notdisplayable, etc.). In cases where a user is human user, the user willthus only be able to see and complete any displayed fields on thedisplayed web page 1218 (e.g., not the hidden reverse CAPTCHA field1220).

Once any response to the modified web page, including any value for thereverse CAPTCHA field, is returned to the web server 1240 from thebrowser 1210 this response may be provided to the response verificationengine 1252. The response verification engine 1252 may provide thereceived response data to RC analysis engine 1258. RC analysis engine1258 may access the RC field data 1266 corresponding to the RC field inthe modified web page sent to that browser 1210 at that user device 1208in response to the initial request. Using this RC field data 1266 anexpected value for the included reverse CAPTCHA field may be determinedand compared with the value for that field in the received response datato determine if the user who submitted the form data was an automatedscript. In many cases, if there is a value received in the response fora reverse CAPTCHA field that had no value (i.e., an empty field) or aninitial or default value for the reverse CAPTCHA field has been changedin the response data, it can be determined that the response wassubmitted by an automated script.

If the expected value for an RC field does not match the value for thecorresponding reverse CAPTCHA field included in the received responsedata the response can be identified as coming from an automated script.The web server 1240 may take a number of actions based on such anidentification, including for example, not responding to furtherrequests from a browser 1210 at the user device 1208, or not taking oneor more actions requested by the received response.

These, and other, aspects of the disclosure and various features andadvantageous details thereof are explained more fully with reference tothe exemplary, and therefore non-limiting, embodiments illustrated anddetailed in the accompanying appendices. It should be understood,however, that the detailed description and the specific examples, whileindicating the some embodiments, are given by way of illustration onlyand not by way of limitation. Descriptions of known programmingtechniques, computer software, hardware, operating platforms andprotocols may be omitted so as not to unnecessarily obscure thedisclosure in detail. Various substitutions, modifications, additionsand/or rearrangements within the spirit and/or scope of the underlyinginventive subject matter will become apparent to those skilled in theart from this disclosure, including the accompanying appendices.

Although the invention has been described with respect to specificembodiments thereof, these embodiments are merely illustrative, and notrestrictive of the invention. The description herein of illustratedembodiments of the invention, including the description in the Abstractand Summary, is not intended to be exhaustive or to limit the inventionto the precise forms disclosed herein (and in particular, the inclusionof any particular embodiment, feature or function within the Abstract orSummary is not intended to limit the scope of the invention to suchembodiment, feature or function). Rather, the description is intended todescribe illustrative embodiments, features and functions in order toprovide a person of ordinary skill in the art context to understand theinvention without limiting the invention to any particularly describedembodiment, feature or function, including any such embodiment featureor function described in the Abstract or Summary. While specificembodiments of, and examples for, the invention are described herein forillustrative purposes only, various equivalent modifications arepossible within the spirit and scope of the invention, as those skilledin the relevant art will recognize and appreciate. As indicated, thesemodifications may be made to the invention in light of the foregoingdescription of illustrated embodiments of the invention and are to beincluded within the spirit and scope of the invention. Thus, while theinvention has been described herein with reference to particularembodiments thereof, a latitude of modification, various changes andsubstitutions are intended in the foregoing disclosures, and it will beappreciated that in some instances some features of embodiments of theinvention will be employed without a corresponding use of other featureswithout departing from the scope and spirit of the invention as setforth. Therefore, many modifications may be made to adapt a particularsituation or material to the essential scope and spirit of theinvention.

Reference throughout this specification to “one embodiment”, “anembodiment”, or “a specific embodiment” or similar terminology meansthat a particular feature, structure, or characteristic described inconnection with the embodiment is included in at least one embodimentand may not necessarily be present in all embodiments. Thus, respectiveappearances of the phrases “in one embodiment”, “in an embodiment”, or“in a specific embodiment” or similar terminology in various placesthroughout this specification are not necessarily referring to the sameembodiment. Furthermore, the particular features, structures, orcharacteristics of any particular embodiment may be combined in anysuitable manner with one or more other embodiments. It is to beunderstood that other variations and modifications of the embodimentsdescribed and illustrated herein are possible in light of the teachingsherein and are to be considered as part of the spirit and scope of theinvention.

In the description herein, numerous specific details are provided, suchas examples of components and/or methods, to provide a thoroughunderstanding of embodiments of the invention. One skilled in therelevant art will recognize, however, that an embodiment may be able tobe practiced without one or more of the specific details, or with otherapparatus, systems, assemblies, methods, components, materials, parts,and/or the like. In other instances, well-known structures, components,systems, materials, or operations are not specifically shown ordescribed in detail to avoid obscuring aspects of embodiments of theinvention. While the invention may be illustrated by using a particularembodiment, this is not and does not limit the invention to anyparticular embodiment and a person of ordinary skill in the art willrecognize that additional embodiments are readily understandable and area part of this invention.

Embodiments discussed herein can be implemented in a computercommunicatively coupled to a network (for example, the Internet),another computer, or in a standalone computer. As is known to thoseskilled in the art, a suitable computer can include a central processingunit (“CPU”), at least one read-only memory (“ROM”), at least one randomaccess memory (“RAM”), at least one hard drive (“HD”), and one or moreinput/output (“I/O”) device(s). The I/O devices can include a keyboard,monitor, printer, electronic pointing device (for example, mouse,trackball, stylus, touch pad, etc.), or the like.

ROM, RAM, and HD are computer memories for storing computer-executableinstructions executable by the CPU or capable of being compiled orinterpreted to be executable by the CPU. Suitable computer-executableinstructions may reside on a computer readable medium (e.g., ROM, RAM,and/or HD), hardware circuitry or the like, or any combination thereof.Within this disclosure, the term “computer readable medium” is notlimited to ROM, RAM, and HD and can include any type of data storagemedium that can be read by a processor. For example, a computer-readablemedium may refer to a data cartridge, a data backup magnetic tape, afloppy diskette, a flash memory drive, an optical data storage drive, aCD-ROM, ROM, RAM, HD, or the like. The processes described herein may beimplemented in suitable computer-executable instructions that may resideon a computer readable medium (for example, a disk, CD-ROM, a memory,etc.). Alternatively, the computer-executable instructions may be storedas software code components on a direct access storage device array,magnetic tape, floppy diskette, optical storage device, or otherappropriate computer-readable medium or storage device.

Any suitable programming language can be used to implement the routines,methods or programs of embodiments of the invention described herein,including C, C++, Java, JavaScript, HTML, or any other programming orscripting code, etc. Other software/hardware/network architectures maybe used. For example, the functions of the disclosed embodiments may beimplemented on one computer or shared/distributed among two or morecomputers in or across a network. Communications between computersimplementing embodiments can be accomplished using any electronic,optical, radio frequency signals, or other suitable methods and tools ofcommunication in compliance with known network protocols.

Different programming techniques can be employed such as procedural orobject oriented. Any particular routine can execute on a single computerprocessing device or multiple computer processing devices, a singlecomputer processor or multiple computer processors. Data may be storedin a single storage medium or distributed through multiple storagemediums, and may reside in a single database or multiple databases (orother data storage techniques). Although the steps, operations, orcomputations may be presented in a specific order, this order may bechanged in different embodiments. In some embodiments, to the extentmultiple steps are shown as sequential in this specification, somecombination of such steps in alternative embodiments may be performed atthe same time. The sequence of operations described herein can beinterrupted, suspended, or otherwise controlled by another process, suchas an operating system, kernel, etc. The routines can operate in anoperating system environment or as stand-alone routines. Functions,routines, methods, steps and operations described herein can beperformed in hardware, software, firmware or any combination thereof.

Embodiments described herein can be implemented in the form of controllogic in software or hardware or a combination of both. The controllogic may be stored in an information storage medium, such as acomputer-readable medium, as a plurality of instructions adapted todirect an information processing device to perform a set of stepsdisclosed in the various embodiments. Based on the disclosure andteachings provided herein, a person of ordinary skill in the art willappreciate other ways and/or methods to implement the invention.

It is also within the spirit and scope of the invention to implement insoftware programming or code an of the steps, operations, methods,routines or portions thereof described herein, where such softwareprogramming or code can be stored in a computer-readable medium and canbe operated on by a processor to permit a computer to perform any of thesteps, operations, methods, routines or portions thereof describedherein. The invention may be implemented by using software programmingor code in one or more general purpose digital computers, by usingapplication specific integrated circuits, programmable logic devices,field programmable gate arrays, optical, chemical, biological, quantumor nanoengineered systems, components and mechanisms may be used. Ingeneral, the functions of the invention can be achieved by any means asis known in the art. For example, distributed, or networked systems,components and circuits can be used. In another example, communicationor transfer (or otherwise moving from one place to another) of data maybe wired, wireless, or by any other means.

A “computer-readable medium” may be any medium that can contain, store,communicate, propagate, or transport the program for use by or inconnection with the instruction execution system, apparatus, system ordevice. The computer readable medium can be, by way of example only butnot by limitation, an electronic, magnetic, optical, electromagnetic,infrared, or semiconductor system, apparatus, system, device,propagation medium, or computer memory. Such computer-readable mediumshall generally be machine readable and include software programming orcode that can be human readable (e.g., source code) or machine readable(e.g., object code). Examples of non-transitory computer-readable mediacan include random access memories, read-only memories, hard drives,data cartridges, magnetic tapes, floppy diskettes, flash memory drives,optical data storage devices, compact-disc read-only memories, and otherappropriate computer memories and data storage devices. In anillustrative embodiment, some or all of the software components mayreside on a single server computer or on any combination of separateserver computers. As one skilled in the art can appreciate, a computerprogram product implementing an embodiment disclosed herein may compriseone or more non-transitory computer readable media storing computerinstructions translatable by one or more processors in a computingenvironment.

A “processor” includes any, hardware system, mechanism or component thatprocesses data, signals or other information. A processor can include asystem with a general-purpose central processing unit, multipleprocessing units, dedicated circuitry for achieving functionality, orother systems. Processing need not be limited to a geographic location,or have temporal limitations. For example, a processor can perform itsfunctions in “real-time,” “offline,” in a “batch mode,” etc. Portions ofprocessing can be performed at different times and at differentlocations, by different (or the same) processing systems.

It will also be appreciated that one or more of the elements depicted inthe drawings/figures can also be implemented in a more separated orintegrated manner, or even removed or rendered as inoperable in certaincases, as is useful in accordance with a particular application.Additionally, any signal arrows in the drawings/figures should beconsidered only as exemplary, and not limiting, unless otherwisespecifically noted.

As used herein, the terms “comprises,” “comprising,” “includes,”“including,” “has,” “having,” or any other variation thereof, areintended to cover a non-exclusive inclusion. For example, a process,product, article, or apparatus that comprises a list of elements is notnecessarily limited only those elements but may include other elementsnot expressly listed or inherent to such process, product, article, orapparatus.

Furthermore, the term “or” as used herein is generally intended to mean“and/or” unless otherwise indicated. For example, a condition A or B issatisfied by any one of the following: A is true (or present) and B isfalse (or not present), A is false (or not present) and B is true (orpresent), and both A and B are true (or present). As used herein, a termpreceded by “a” or “an” (and “the” when antecedent basis is “a” or “an”)includes both singular and plural of such term (i.e., that the reference“a” or “an” clearly indicates only the singular or only the plural).Also, as used in the description herein, the meaning of “in” includes“in” and “on” unless the context clearly dictates otherwise.

What is claimed is:
 1. A system, comprising: a server computer,including a processor; a non-transitory computer readable mediumcomprising instructions for: determining, at the server computer, areverse CAPTCHA field and an associated value for inclusion in a webpage; providing, from the server computer, the reverse CAPTCHA field forthe web page, wherein when the web page is rendered at a user device thereverse CAPTCHA field and the associated value determined at the webserver computer are not visible in a visual presentation of the web pageat the user device; receiving, at the server computer, a responseassociated with the web page from the user device, the response from theuser device including a received value associated with the reverseCAPTCHA field; in response to receiving the response associated with theweb page at the server computer, obtaining an expected value of thereverse CAPTCHA field at the server computer; and validating thereceived value associated with the reverse CAPTCHA field included in theresponse to the web page based on the expected value of the reverseCAPTCHA field determined at the server computer to determine if theresponse has been provided by a human user or a non-human user.
 2. Thesystem of claim 1, wherein the instructions are further for generatingthe web page to include the reverse CAPTCHA field.
 3. The system ofclaim 1, wherein the reverse CAPTCHA field is included in the web pagewhen rendered at the user device.
 4. The system of claim 1, whereindetermining the reverse CAPTCHA field and the associated value is basedon a reverse CAPTCHA rule includes a question definition defining thereverse CAPTCHA field and a value definition defining the associatedvalue.
 5. The system of claim 4, wherein the value definition definienshow the expected value is created.
 6. The system of claim 4, wherein thereverse CAPTCHA rule includes a validation definition defining how thereceived value associated with the reverse CAPTCHA field included in theresponse to the web page should be validated.
 7. The system of claim 4,wherein the reverse CAPTCHA rule includes a hiding definition defininghow the associated value is visually hidden in the visual presentationof the web page.
 8. The system of claim 4, where the reverse CAPTCHArule is randomly selected.
 9. A method, comprising: determining, at aserver computer, a reverse CAPTCHA field and an associated value forinclusion in a web page; providing, from the server computer, thereverse CAPTCHA field for the web page, wherein when the web page isrendered at a user device the reverse CAPTCHA field and the associatedvalue determined at the web server computer are not visible in a visualpresentation of the web page at the user device; receiving, at theserver computer, a response associated with the web page from the userdevice, the response from the user device including a received valueassociated with the reverse CAPTCHA field; in response to receiving theresponse associated with the web page at the server computer, obtainingan expected value of the reverse CAPTCHA field at the server computer;and validating the received value associated with the reverse CAPTCHAfield included in the response to the web page based on the expectedvalue of the reverse CAPTCHA field determined at the server computer todetermine if the response has been provided by a human user or anon-human user.
 10. The method of claim 9, wherein the instructions arefurther for generating the web page to include the reverse CAPTCHAfield.
 11. The method of claim 9, wherein the reverse CAPTCHA field isincluded in the web page when rendered at the user device.
 12. Themethod of claim 9, wherein determining the reverse CAPTCHA field and theassociated value is based on a reverse CAPTCHA rule includes a questiondefinition defining the reverse CAPTCHA field and a value definitiondefining the associated value.
 13. The method of claim 12, wherein thevalue definition definiens how the expected value is created.
 14. Themethod of claim 12, wherein the reverse CAPTCHA rule includes avalidation definition defining how the received value associated withthe reverse CAPTCHA field included in the response to the web pageshould be validated.
 15. The method of claim 12, wherein the reverseCAPTCHA rule includes a hiding definition defining how the associatedvalue is visually hidden in the visual presentation of the web page. 16.The method of claim 12, where the reverse CAPTCHA rule is randomlyselected.
 17. A non-transitory computer readable medium, comprisinginstructions for: determining, at a server computer, a reverse CAPTCHAfield and an associated value for inclusion in a web page; providing,from the server computer, the reverse CAPTCHA field for the web page,wherein when the web page is rendered at a user device the reverseCAPTCHA field and the associated value determined at the web servercomputer are not visible in a visual presentation of the web page at theuser device; receiving, at the server computer, a response associatedwith the web page from the user device, the response from the userdevice including a received value associated with the reverse CAPTCHAfield; in response to receiving the response associated with the webpage at the server computer, obtaining an expected value of the reverseCAPTCHA field at the server computer; and validating the received valueassociated with the reverse CAPTCHA field included in the response tothe web page based on the expected value of the reverse CAPTCHA fielddetermined at the server computer to determine if the response has beenprovided by a human user or a non-human user.
 18. The non-transitorycomputer readable medium of claim 17, wherein the instructions arefurther for generating the web page to include the reverse CAPTCHAfield.
 19. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 17,wherein the reverse CAPTCHA field is included in the web page whenrendered at the user device.
 20. The non-transitory computer readablemedium of claim 17, wherein determining the reverse CAPTCHA field andthe associated value is based on a reverse CAPTCHA rule includes aquestion definition defining the reverse CAPTCHA field and a valuedefinition defining the associated value.
 21. The non-transitorycomputer readable medium of claim 20, wherein the value definitiondefiniens how the expected value is created.
 22. The non-transitorycomputer readable medium of claim 20, wherein the reverse CAPTCHA ruleincludes a validation definition defining how the received valueassociated with the reverse CAPTCHA field included in the response tothe web page should be validated.
 23. The non-transitory computerreadable medium of claim 20, wherein the reverse CAPTCHA rule includes ahiding definition defining how the associated value is visually hiddenin the visual presentation of the web page.
 24. The non-transitorycomputer readable medium of claim 20, where the reverse CAPTCHA rule israndomly selected.